“The letter W is a kid of the autumn of Rome. In the fifth hundred years CE, the occidental fractional of the Roman Empire disintegrated into a patchwork of new kingdoms and new rulers. The reasons rearward this downfall of imperial power are complex, but a ample function was played by assorted peoples who had formerly lived exterior its borders. The Romans power have looked downward on these migrants as ‘barbarians’, but they additionally increasingly came to depend on them for armed forces support. They were foederati—peoples border by treaty to combat Rome’s enemies in come back for district and food. It was lone alongside the assistance of the foederati (a Latin term connected to English federation) that the Romans were capable to see off the danger of Attila the Hun in 451. Yet the additional power these local leaders had, the small authority the emperor and the chief province could wield. This culminated in the overthrowing of the final emperor in the west in 476.
Language would have been a part of the distinct between Roman and barbarian. By the fourth and fifth centuries, the occidental empire had rotate into overwhelmingly Latin-speaking. By contrast, the newcomers said their own languages, perchance alongside a passing cognition of Latin too. From what we can tell, a awesome many of these migrants said Germanic languages. One of these incoming tongues was the ancestor of the tongue you are study correct now, English, which arrived in the remains of Roman Britain during this era. Germanic-speaking elites could now be established from southernmost Spain to the coasts of the North Sea. These new rulers were eager to market themselves as lawful successors to the emperors, and there was significant continuity during this turbulent period.
By keeping up appearances and styling themselves as fine Romans, they could dampen the jealousy of the old aristocracy and acquire famous support. The new kings did not importune that scribes ought to compose authoritative documents in their own Germanic tongue, but eagerly adopted the additional distinguished Latin language. This worked fine most of the time, but power occasionally hit a snag. Latin-writing lands were now ruled by men whose names contained un-Latin sounds. A new king power desire his scribes to diagram up a charter for several awesome display of generosity, but how were the scribes to enchantment that king’s name?
One of the troublesome appears for writers was /w/. This is the average consonant in English water and want, and it would have been current in kingly Germanic names akin Clovis, Vitiges and Odoacer. The difficulty was, the Latin alphabet now had no letter for this sound.
Nonetheless, W established itself as a norm way to enchantment the Germanic audio /w/, including in Latin texts produced in England.
In ancient times, you would’ve heard the audio /w/ all about the Mediterranean Sea. Both Latin and Ancient Greek formerly used the sound, and the two the Romans and the Greeks had alphabet to enchantment it. This was a audio that they, fair akin English, had inherited as part of their average Indo-European ancestry. Yet, as we saw in Chapters F and U, it was now abroad to them. In Greek, the consonant and its letter Ϝ had faded away, during in Latin, V had arrive to remain for the fricative /v/ instead.91 Time and period again, we discover the ancient audio /w/ being misplaced or altered throughout the Indo-European family of languages. It would afterward happen in Continental Germanic languages too; in German today, W stands for /v/. The English consonant /w/ is really a rare survivor, rescued from possible alter by its immigration to the isle of Britain.
Out of the gathering of languages and penning in the new post-classical world, a letter was delivered to enchantment the alien /w/. From the sixth hundred years onwards, apt starting in the mighty kingdom of Francia, innovative scribes doubled U. Within Latin texts, we discover Germanically-named individuals akin the abbot UUandeberctus and King UUaldemarus. The two alphabet were increasingly written as -one, and at smallest by the 11th century, they had fused into the letter W as we cognize it. Note that this was lengthy before the divided of V and U into two distinct letters, hence several contemporary disagreement complete their offspring’s name. In the English alphabet, it’s called double U. For the French, it’s double vé.
From its origins in Francia, W was exported to nearby lands that additionally needed it. W appears in first English texts, although not without competition. One alternative, seen in Cædmon’s Hymn in Chapter U, was a sole U. Scribes would toggle to one U whenever the following vowel was an /u/. This would evade awkward-looking sequences of three Us in a row.
This dislike of ‘triple U’ in medieval texts is in fact motionless energetic in English orthography today. In the afterward Middle Ages, scribes would toggle a U for an O if it came following W. This was done for the purpose of clarity whenever reading. Even whenever words had a abbreviated /u/ vowel, spellings like wulf, wud and wunder would have been too confusing in the era of manuscript writing, what alongside its rows of upright quill strokes. This avoidance maneuver can explain the contemporary mismatch between appears and orthography in wolf, wood and wonder. Nonetheless, W established itself as a norm way to enchantment the Germanic audio /w/, including in Latin texts produced in England.
Nonetheless, W established itself as a norm way to enchantment the Germanic audio /w/, including in Latin texts produced in England.For example, the Life of Saint Æthelwold is a tenth-century existence former that narrates the holy existence of an English bishop. Being based in southernmost England, its Latin tongue is crammed complete of English place-names containing the audio /w/, akin Winchester, Worcester and Wallingford. The saint’s own name is spelled Aðeluuoldus.
Yet, during the identical pre-Norman period, a specifically English written civilization was additionally emerging alongside Latin. Its writers plainly had a awareness that this was a distinct tongue from Latin, and hence could have its own orthography practices. While penning in Latin ought to use lone Latin letters, they felt that they had additional liberty whenever orthography Old English. Just as they had done alongside the letter Þ, English writers looked for an substitute to a lengthy W or an ambiguous sole U. They reached into the earth of runes, and employed Ƿ.
Instead, W has been brought in to inform the audience that the OW in town is a greatly shifted diphthong, no longer a sole lengthy vowel as it had formerly been.
Known as wynn, the letter Ƿ is extremely average in our Old English sources. See on p.301 how it appears twice in the archetypal row in our lone living copy of the poem Beowulf, in the words hƿæt ‘what’ and ƿe ‘we’.
It was norm orthography in the Wessex tradition, which would have written two and word as tƿa and ƿord. Examples of Ƿ exterior the parchment pages of manuscripts display that the letter enjoyed famous use for centuries. A adorned dagger, established in Kent and dated to the ninth or tenth century, informs its viewers:
Biorhtelm me ƿorte ‘Biorhtelm wrought me’
S[i]gebereht me ah ‘S[i]gebereht owns me’
Yet, as you power have noticed, wynn is no longer a part of the English alphabet. It did last the Norman Conquest, but gradually fizzled out during the Middle English era. It faced significant opposition from the orthography of French and Latin, which had continued to use W since the sixth century. The force to equivalent them meant that it was by W that Ƿ was eventually replaced.
Ever since the reapplication of W to English, the tongue has put the letter to a awesome many uses. Some instances of W are additional latest in origin. Some equal developed out of an first G.
In Old English, the letter G stood for one of a brace of akin sounds, depending on anywhere in the term it came. In the center of a word, a G represented a velar and fricative audio that was akin a weaker /g/. During the Middle English period, this audio shifted into /w/, which additionally has a velar norm as a sound. This is how an Old English term akin fugol ‘bird’ has rotate into fowl, or how the sagu tool is now a saw. The Norse idea of lǫg, the facts of existence laid downward by destiny or society, is rearward English law.
These changes of G to W indicate a changed consonant, but elsewhere in spelling, W is used to inform us item concerning a vowel. It is particularly average in words that have undergone the Great Vowel Shift, akin town, cow and owl. These go rear to tun, cu and ule in Old English, none of which had a G. Instead, W has been brought in to inform the audience that the OW in town is a greatly shifted diphthong, no longer a sole lengthy vowel as it had formerly been.
OW shares this function alongside OU. The second choice for the identical vowel appears alternatively in words akin hour, shout and found. There has been a half-hearted regulation in English orthography to use OW at the end of a term or syllable, and OU everyplace else. This regulation would explain why we don’t write ‘nou’, ‘eyebrou’ and ‘allou’, but fairly now, eyebrow and allow. At the end of a term akin now, there is an audible /w/ sound, particularly if the next term starts alongside a vowel (e.g. now I think …). However, this regulation hasn’t been rigorously applied; we ought to write ‘broun’ and ‘croun’, not brown and crown.
Both OU and OW had fine reasons to rotate into the norm orthography for this post-shift vowel, but English unsuccessful to create a resolute decision in favor of one or the other. It has equal exploited the optionality to differentiate distinct words alongside a average origin. We enchantment flower with OW, during we use OU for the finest norm or the ‘flower’ of dirt grain—that is, flour.
Before we can depart W, there’s a mischievous consequence of the letter to be acknowledged.
Consider three words: as, has and was. The third word, I think you volition agree, does not rhyme alongside the former two, notwithstanding their average spelling. Likewise, consider: and, hand and wand. The identical deficiency of rhyme occurs, as it does in the trio arm, harm and warm. Notice the odd one out in ash, bash, cash, dash, gash and wash. If we additionally difference fan alongside swan, far with war, or fat alongside what, afterward their average denominator becomes clear: there’s item disruptive concerning the letter W.
To comprehend this effect, we have to concentration on a particular norm that appears in our languages can have. Vowels have featured frequently in this book, particularly alongside regard to how far forwards, backwards, elevated or low our tongue is whenever we pronounce them. These features of tongue stance are accompanied by the additional aspect of lip rounding—whether or not we purse our lips at the identical time.
The key item to note current is that the consonant /w/ is pronounced alongside the lips and the rear of the tongue. In the case of was, wand, wash and the rest, what has happened is that the /w/ rounded the following vowel, and additionally dragged it backwards in the mouth. The consonant has shared its rounded lips alongside the formerly unrounded vowel that comes immediately following it.
Consequently, in many varieties of English today, was, wand and ward have rounded vowels, during unrounded vowels can motionless be heard in their W-less counterparts, has, hand and hard. The cot-caught merger in North American English (see Chapter O) may be shifting and unrounding the particular vowel in the W-words, but nonetheless, hand motionless doesn’t rhyme alongside wand. The fact that this is an consequence of neighboring appears explains why the identical changes and divergent vowels have additionally occurred in quality and quartz. They are not spelled alongside a W, but they motionless merge the influential consonant. Quartz doesn’t rhyme alongside parts, but fairly shorts.
We motionless enchantment wash and warm as if they rhyme with ash and arm, since until fairly recently, they did. Their rounding is fairly modern. It may have started sometime in the 15th century, but for the following four centuries, it remained constricted to certain words and contexts. The archetypal instances of W-rounding were apt in extremely average and unstressed words, akin was. When stated frequently and quickly, it’s additional productive to advancement from a rounded-lipped consonant to a rounded vowel, than to toggle off that rounding between the two. The consequence was likely not current in the English of Chaucer, nor norm in the afterward address of Shakespeare, on the basis of the words that these poets think are rhymes. In his sonnets, Shakespeare pairs was alongside glass, and warmed with disarmed.
Then were not summer’s distillation left,
A liquid captive pent in walls of glass,
Beauty’s consequence alongside attractiveness were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was.
–Shakespeare, Sonnet 5
The fairest votary took up that fire
Which many legions of true hearts had warmed;
And so the broad of hot desire
Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.
–Shakespeare, Sonnet 154
Even Lord Byron, composing his narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in the first 19th century, rhymes three words that together audio clumsy today.
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a jail on all hand:
I saw from out the motion her structures rise
As from the blow of the enchanter’s wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings develop …
–Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV
Yet again, we have an case of a sensible alter in sounds, and spellings that have not caught up. We could of way commencement to write wond instead of wand, or wor alternatively of war, or equal woz for was. Maybe we volition one day. For the instant at least, English readers and writers cognize to be careful about the English letter W.” (297–306)
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This part has been adapted from Why Q Needs U (Blink/Bonnier, U.S. June 2, 2026) by Danny Bate. It is provided courtesy of the publisher.
