Q, q [Called ‘kew’, rhyming with ‘few’]. The 17th LETTER of the modern Roman ALPHABET as used for English. It originated as the Phoenician symbol qop, which had the value of a voiceless uvular plosive: a k-like sound made well back in the mouth. It was initially adopted by the Greeks as koppa, to represent /k/ before a back vowel; but classical GREEK preferred the letter kappa, the ancestor of K, and koppa fell into disuse. The Etruscans used three Greek letters, gamma, kappa, and koppa, for variants on /k/. Koppa was used specifically before /u/, a practice followed by LATIN, which gave the letter its characteristic curved tail as Q. This letter was little used in OLD ENGLISH, which used the digraph cw in words now spelt with qu: cwen/queen, cwic/quick. FRENCH inherited the digraph qu from Latin, and after the Norman Conquest it was increasingly used in written English by French-influenced scribes, so that by 1300 cw had been supplanted. For a time, qu spread further especially in Northern English, to words now spelt with wh. This pattern persisted longest in Scots, in which, for example, what was written quhat until the 18c, and quh survives in such surnames as Colquhoun (‘Cahoon’), Farquhar (‘Farker’), and Urquhart (‘Urkart’).

Sound value and occurrence

(1) In English, q has the same value as k or hard c, and is generally followed by u, with the joint pronunciation /kw/: quaint, quibble. (2) Loss of /w/ in French led to spelling changes that obscure the common ancestry of such English/French pairs as quash/casser, quire/cahier. On the other hand, English has developed qu in words that in French had, and still have, cu: esquire/écuyer, squirrel/écureuil. (3) In English, qu typically occurs word-initially before a, e, i, o (quack, quash, quail, quest, queer, quit, quite, quote) and after s (squat, squeal, squirrel). (4) Medial qu also occurs: adequate, banquet, equal, frequent, liquid, request. (5) When the Latin prefix ad- precedes qu, it is assimilated as ac: acquaint, acquire, acquit. However, initial a sometimes also precedes qu without c (aquatic, aquiline) with no distinction in pronunciation.

Exotic Q, QU

(1) Though rarely so used, q without u has the same value as k and as c before a, o, u. It is used as a TRANSLITERATION of the HEBREW letter quph and ARABIC qaf (cognate with Phoenician qop), both uvular plosives given the value /k/ in everyday English: Iraq, qaf, Qatar, Qur'ān (Koran). (2) In the Pinyin script for Chinese, q represents the ch sound in cheese, as in Qian-long, Qin-huang-dao: see CHINA. (3) Words that have entered English in recent centuries from Romance languages have mostly kept the value of qu as /k/: word-finally with e (arabesque, grotesque, mosque, opaque, picturesque, unique), medially (bouquet, coquette, mosquito), and occasionally initially (quiche, but not queue), especially in names (Quezon City in the Philippines). The recent French LOAN questionnaire is sometimes pronounced with /k/, but usually with /kw/ by ANALOGY with the earlier loan question. Quay is an 18c respelling of kay or key, by analogy with French quai. There is an alternation between /kw/ in conquest (compare quest, request) and liquid, and /k/ in conquer/conqueror and liquor. (4) In the ACRONYMS Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services) and QARANC ( Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps) the q is pronounced as /kw/, as if followed by a u: ‘Kwontas’, ‘Kwarank’. (5) Forms with medial cqu pronounced /k/, include: lacquer, lacquey (now lackey), and racquet (also racket). (6) AmE generally has bark, check, licorice where BrE keeps the q in barque, cheque, liquorice.