One-Letter Words, a Dictionary (17 page)

U IN PRINT AND PROVERB

1. (in literature)
“The last of the five vowels, If ‘you’ repeat them; or the fifth, if I.”
—William Shakespeare,
Love’s Labor’s Lost,
V.i.54. There is a pun on
U
and
you.

2. (in literature)
“U, cycles, divine vibrations of dark green oceans,/Peacefulness of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of wrinkles/Which alchemy prints on studious foreheads.”
—Arthur Rimbaud, “Vowels”

3. (in literature)
“He had looked up through the stinging rain into the dark haze above him, and a giant letter U had filled the sky. He was about to be swallowed up by the mysterious forces of the Devil’s Triangle.”
—Jimmy Buffett,
Where Is Joe Merchant?:
A Novel Tale

4. (in literature)
“U is the urn.”
—Victor Hugo, quoted in
ABZ
by Mel Gooding

5.
adj.
(informal)
Characteristic of the upper class.

6.
n.
A written representation of the letter.

7.
n.
A device, such as a printer’s type, for reproducing the letter.

SHAPELY SUBJECTS

8.
n.
Something having the shape of a U,
as in a crescent moon.
It was south of New York by nine degrees of latitude, which should have been enough to make a difference in the angle of the moon in the sky, I figured.
The crescent would be turned clockwise slightly tonight, so that it would look more like the letter U
than the letter C it had been the night before in New
York.
—John Berendt,
Midnight in the Garden of
Good and Evil
The hotel was basically a thick letter U, with the base of the U on Broadway and the arms of the U on the side streets…. The U started with floor seventeen and went on up that way, so all the hotel rooms could have windows.
—Donald E. Westlake,
What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

9.
n.
U turn:
a turn made by a vehicle into the opposite direction.
Another well-meant but unpleasant habit of Herschel’s is the way he takes up your ideas, identifies with them, expands upon them, develops their implications, drives them on like an old Ford so that soon they seem to have taken a U-turn into another identity: not even the year or the make are the same.
—William H. Gass,
The Tunnel

10.
n.
A valley resulting from glacial erosion.
The shoreline receded, forming a giant U valley.
—Piers Anthony,
Up in a Heaval: A Xanth Novell

11.
n.
U boat:
a military submarine.
Although Admiral Karl Doenitz, commander of the German U-boat fleet, was surprised by Pearl
Harbor and the entry of the United States into the war, he quickly improvised a plan for attack across the Atlantic. Sensing a great opportunity, he proposed sending twelve U-boats to American waters.
—Homer Hickam,
Torpedo Junction: U-Boat War
Off America’s East Coast, 1942

12.
n.
U bolt:
a bolt with two threaded arms (for attaching nuts).

13.
n.
U lock:
a U-shaped bicycle lock.
Although heavy and ugly, the frame-mounted
U-lock is one of the best ways of stopping thieves from going off with your bike.
—Fred Milson,
Complete Bike Maintenance

14.
n.
U rail:
a U-shaped rail.

15.
n.
U-shaped bottom:
a pattern of stock market activity that drops quickly, hovers at a low point, and then sharply recovers.

16.
n.
U stirrup:
a U-shaped stirrup for reinforced concrete.

17.
n.
U trap:
a plumbing device used to trap sewer gas.
“I expect that this shaft is designed like a U-trap. I bet that the passage rises again—” she pointed at the mysterious doorway in the far wall, “in fact I can see the first steps even from here.”
—Wilbur Smith,
The Seventh Scroll

18.
n.
U tube:
a tube that branches into two sections.

19. (music)
A harp that has a U-shaped wooden frame,
through which the musician strings strands of his or her own hair.

HEY, U

20.
n.
Something arbitrarily designated U
(e.g., a person, place, or other thing).

21.
pronoun.
(informal)
You,
as in “I O U” and “Tune Up While U Wait.”

MISCELLANEOUS

22.
n.
Any spoken sound represented by the letter.
The sound vibration of the vowel U means “to carry, carrying light.”
—Joseph E. Rael,
Tracks of Dancing
Light: A Native American Approach to Understanding Your Name

23.
n.
The twenty-first letter of the alphabet.
Murray worked ceaselessly on his [
Oxford English
] dictionary for thirty-six years…. He was working on the letter u when he died.
—Bill Bryson,
The
Mother Tongue

24.
n.
The twenty-first in a series.

25.
n.
The twenty-first section in a piece of music.

26.
n.
Dream consciousness.
And so we come to the letter U [of the sacred Hindu syllable AUM], which is said to represent the field and state of Dream Consciousness, where, although subject and object may appear to be different and separate from each other, they are actually one and the same.
—Joseph Campbell,
The Mythic
Image

SCIENTIFIC MATTERS

27.
n.
(thermodynamics)
Intrinsic energy.

28.
n.
(chemistry)
The symbol for the element uranium in the periodic table.

29.
n.
(biology)
Uracil,
one of the four nitrogenous bases found in RNA nucleotides.

30.
n.
(mathematics)
A matrix with special properties.
U is an echelon matrix.
—Marie A. Vitulli, “A Brief History of Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory”

FOREIGN MEANINGS

31.
n.
(French)
Stirrup-shaped,
as in
en U.

32.
n.
(Burmese)
A title of respect,
used before a man’s proper name.