tzarina, tzaritza

[CZARINA.] tzět-zě, s. [Native name.] Music : An Aby in i an instrument of the guitar kind, formed of a long carved neck attached to a gourd. It has frets and one string usually made of the tough fiber of a pal in-tree. THE twenty-first letter and the fifth vowel of the English alphabet. It is one of the three primitive vowels, from which the various vowels sounds in the Aryan languages have been developed. Its truo pri mary sound was that which it still retains in most of the European languages-viz,, that of oo in cool , tool , wood ., corresponding to the French ou, as in cour , tour , ., the sound being sometimes short (marked in this book ů) and sometimes long (marked û). The Anglo Saxon long ú (marked with an accent) has commonly become in modern English the diphthong ou or ow , as A.S. thú thou, nú =now, múth =mouth, . After r, and after the sounds sh and zh , u has generally retained its old long sound, as in rule , truth , . In A. S. rúm =room, brúcan =brook (v.) the original long sound is retained, though the form is altered. The old short sound of u is still retained in bull , full , pull , put , ., but as a rule this sound became changed (probably about the middle of the seventeenth century) to the sound heard in cut , tun , fun , ., (marked ů), a sound then new to English, not being mentioned by any writer before 1653. This sound, which is very similar to that of the unaccented French e, is characteristic of English, and is often given to the vowels a, e, when unac cented, as is cavalry, camel, . It is also given to chin, bench; go, gem; thin, this; ubiety the vowel o, even when accented, as in money, come, honey, among, . A modified form of it often occurs beforer, as in bur , cur , fur , ., and sometimes before rr , as in knurr , purr , . (marked ŭ). This sound is sometimes given to a , i, o, and y beforer, as auricular, her , fir, work, martyr. In the sixteenth or seventeenth century arose the practice of using gu to represent a hard g before an e, as in gue , a French practice, borrowed from qu ; and to this, and the wish to indicate a long vowel by a final e , must be attributed plague , vague , fatigue , rogue , . The final -que does not, however, always indicate a preceding long vowel; cf. epilogue, synagogue , tongue , . The use of u for win persuade, ., is modern, also imitated from its use in qu . The long sound of u , as in mute, duke, confuse, . (marked ū), and modified by r, as in cure , pure (marked ü), is not a simple vowel, an i sound being more or le distinctly introduced before it, or fused with it. The corresponding short sound is heard in unit , unity , . (marked u). In some dialects in this country, this sound is also sometimes given to u afterr. Duke is sometimes vulgarly pronounced with the same sound, as dook . The original sound of short u is now only retained in bury , burial , busy , and busine . The long sound of u as in mute , is also represented by other combinations, as by - ue , in due , sue , .; by ew , in dew , flew , .; and by ui in suit . " De [is] used in later spelling as a final u , owing to arule made by noone knows whom, no one knows why, and no one knows when, that no English word can end in u." ( Ellis : Early English Pronunciation , ch. vi., §1, p. 579.) In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ue =French eu. Ui has several sounds: (1)= u , as in suit , fruit , .; (2)=i, as in build , guild ; (3) i, as in guide ; (4) 1, as in mosquito ; (5) wi , as in anguish , languid . In buoy , buy , buyer , buying , ., the u is silent, as also in plaguy . (For qu , see under Q.) In the best period of Roman literature the u sound was expre ed by the character v , a character which did not exist in the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, its sound, when it occurred between two vowels, being represented by f , or occasionally by u. In later times u and v stood indifferently for either sound, the capital being generally written V. In this respect U and stand to each other as I and J. In almost all English dictionaries, up to a comparatively recent date, words beginning with U and V were combined. In where the sheets are marked by lettering, standing for 1, 2, 3, .), the signs J, V, and w, are ignored, so that, for this purpose, the letters of the alphabet are only twenty three. In respect to its order in the alphabet, its form, and its history in general, U corresponds with the Greek upsilon . Greek words containing the diphthong ou , when Latinized, were spelled with a u; while Greek words with u , when Latinized, were spelled with y . I. U as an initial is used for United, as in U.S. United States; U.S. A. United States of America; U. K. the United Kingdom; U. P. United Presbyterian (Scotch); U.C.or A. U. C. in dates belonging to Roman history is a contraction for Ab urbe con dita from the building of the city (of Rome), as U. C. 400 in the year of Rome 400. II. U as a symbol is used, in chemistry, for uranium.