Y

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Y 25th letter of the English alphabet and a letter included in the alphabets of several w European languages. It was derived (as were f, u, v and w) from the Semitic letter vaw, a name meaning hook. It was adopted by the Greeks as upsilon. The Romans made two letters out of upsilon – Y and V (see V; W). They only employed Y when writing words derived from Greek but using Roman characters. Thus it did not really enter the Roman alphabet until the 2nd century ad. In modern English y may represent a consonant or a vowel sound. It functions as a consonant in such words as yell or young and is what phoneticians technically call a palatal semivowel without lip-rounding. As a vowel letter, it duplicates some of the sounds of the letter i and is found in such words as hymn, hype, and day.