w

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The 23rd letter of the modern English alphabet.
• noun Any of the speech sounds represented by the letter w.
• noun The 23rd in a series.
• noun Something shaped like the letter W.
• abbreviation weight
• abbreviation width
• abbreviation Physics work

from The Century Dictionary.

• An abbreviation of West Africa
• of West Australia.
• noun An abbreviation of Water Board
• noun of way-bill.
• An abbreviation [lowercase] in a ship's log-book, of wet dew
• of Western Postal District, London
• [lowercase] of wife
• of Wolfram
• [lowercase or cap.] in electrotechnics, of work
• in electricity, of watt, the unit of electric power
• nautical, of winter free-board line. See free-board.
• noun An abbreviation of West Indies.
• An abbreviation of wave-length.
• An abbreviation of Worshipful Master.
• noun An abbreviation [lowercase or cap.] of water-closet
• noun of Wesleyan Chapel
• noun of Western Central (London Postal District)
• noun [lowercase] of without charge.
• An abbreviation of War Office.
• noun An abbreviation of Worthy Patriarch.
• noun An abbreviation of West Saxon.
• noun Ar. abbreviation of West Riding;
• noun of William Rex (King William).
• noun An abbreviation of Worthy Grand, prefixed to various titles of office among Free-masons and similar orders: as, W. G. C. (Worthy Grand Chaplain or Conductor).
• noun In printing, an abbreviation of wrong font: a mark on the margin of a proof, calling attention to the fact that the letter or letters, etc., opposite differ from the rest in size or face.
• noun An abbreviation of writer to the signet. See signet.
• The twenty-third letter and eighteenth consonant-sign in the English alphabet.
• As a symbol:
• In chem., the symbol for tungsten (NL. wolframium).
• In hydrodynamics, the symbol for the component of the velocity parallel to the axis of Z.
• As an abbreviation:
• of west;
• of western;
• of William;
• of Wednesday;
• of Welsh;
• of warden;
• of week.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• the twenty-third letter of the English alphabet, is usually a consonant, but sometimes it is a vowel, forming the second element of certain diphthongs, as in few, how. It takes its written form and its name from the repetition of a V, this being the original form of the Roman capital letter which we call U. Etymologically it is most related to v and u. See V, and U. Some of the uneducated classes in England, especially in London, confuse w and v, substituting the one for the other, as weal for veal, and veal for weal; wine for vine, and vine for wine, etc. See Guide to Pronunciation, §§ 266-268.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The twenty-third letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.
• noun The first letter of callsigns allocated to American broadcast television and radio stations east of the Mississippi river.
• noun voiced labial-velar approximant
• noun The twenty-third letter of the English alphabet, called double-u and written in the Latin script.