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V, or v, is the twenty-second and fifth-to-last letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Ancient Corinthian vase depicting Perseus, Andromeda and Ketos. The inscriptions denoting the depicted persons are written in an archaic form of the Greek alphabet. The letter V ultimately comes from the Phoenician letter waw by way of U.

The pointed form “v” was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form “u” was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas “valour” and “excuse” appeared as in modern printing, “have” and “upon” were printed as “haue” and “vpon”. The first distinction between the letters “u” and “v” is recorded in a Gothic script from 1386, where “v” preceded “u”. Traditionally, V is not doubled to indicate a short vowel, the way, for example, P is doubled to indicate the difference between “super” and “supper”. However, that is changing with newly coined words, such as savvy, “divvy up” and “skivvies”. This rule does not apply to transliterations of Slavic and Hebrew words, such as Kiev, or to words that started out as abbreviations, such as sov for sovereign.