- published: 10 Apr 2016
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Y (named wye or wy /ˈwaɪ/, plural wyes) is the twenty-fifth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.
In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing /y/, which was not a native sound. In Romance languages, the pronunciation became the regular name: Spanish i griega, French i grec, etc.
Old English borrowed Latin Y to write the native Old English sound /y/ (previously written with the rune yr ᚣ). The name may be related to ui in various medieval languages; in Middle English it was wi /wiː/, which through the Great Vowel Shift became the Modern English wy /waɪ/.
Y is the only letter (other than US/Irish "zee" for Z) whose name is unrelated to its name in modern Romance languages.
The furthest back direct ancestor of English letter Y was the Semitic letter waw, from which also come F, U, V, and W. See F for details. The Greek and Latin alphabets developed from the Phoenician form of this early alphabet. In Modern English, there is also some historical influence from the old English letter yogh (Ȝȝ), which develop from Semitic gimel, as shown below.
Wonder Woman is a fictional character, a DC Comics superheroine created by William Moulton Marston. She first appeared in All Star Comics #8 (December 1941). The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1986.
Wonder Woman is a warrior Princess of the Amazons (based on the Amazons of Greek mythology) and was created by Marston, an American, as a "distinctly feminist role model whose mission was to bring the Amazon ideals of love, peace, and sexual equality to a world torn by the hatred of men." Known in her homeland as Diana of Themyscira, her powers include superhuman strength, flight (even though the original Wonder Woman did not have this ability), super-speed, super-stamina, and super-agility. She is highly proficient in hand-to-hand combat and in the art of tactical warfare. She also possesses animal-like cunning skills and a natural rapport with animals, which has been presented as an actual ability to communicate with the animal kingdom. She uses her Lasso of Truth, which forces those bound by it to tell the truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets, a tiara which serves as a projectile, and, in some stories, an invisible airplane.