This article is about the Latin alphabet letter. For other uses, see Q (disambiguation).

The letter Q is the seventeenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is cue, occasionally spelled cu (both pronounced ).

History

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Egyptian hieroglyph wj	Phoenician Q	Etruscan Q	Greek Qoppa	-	V24

The Semitic sound value of Qôp (perhaps originally qaw cord, and possibly based on an Egyptian hieroglyph) was (voiceless uvular plosive), a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones. In Greek, this sign as Qoppa Ϙ probably came to represent several labialized velar plosives, among them and . As a result of later sound shifts, these sounds in Greek changed to and respectively. Therefore, Qoppa was transformed into two letters: Qoppa, which stood for a number only, and Phi Φ which stood for the aspirated sound that came to be pronounced in Modern Greek. The Etruscans used Q only in conjunction with V, symbolizing thus a . Some scholars claim that Q and Phi are unrelated.

Usage

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In most modern western languages written in latin script, such as in Romance and Germanic languages Q appears almost exclusively in the digraph QU, though see: Q without U. In English this digraph most often denotes the cluster , except in borrowings from French where it makes the /k/ sound as in plaque. In Italian qu is (where [w is an allophone of ); in German, ; and in French, Portuguese language, Occitan, Spanish, and Catalan, . (In Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan and French, qu replaces c for before the vowels i and e, since in those contexts c is a fricative and letter 'k' is seldom used outside loan words.) In the Aymara, Azeri, Uzbek, Quechua, and Tatar languages, Q is a voiceless uvular plosive. is also used in IPA for the voiceless uvular plosive, as well as in most transliteration schemes of Semitic languages for the "emphatic" qōp sound.

In Maltese and Võro, Q denotes the glottal stop.

In Chinese Hanyu Pinyin and Albanian, Q is used to represent the sound , which is close to English "ch" in "cheese".

Codes for computing

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In Unicode the capital Q is codepoint U+0051 and the lowercase q is U+0071.

The ASCII code for capital Q is 81 and for lowercase q is 113; or in binary 01010001 and 01110001, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital Q is 216 and for lowercase q is 152.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "Q" and "q" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings for Q

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• In astronomy,
  • Q stands for an August 16 through 31 discovery, in the provisional designation of a comet (e.g. C/2004 Q2, Comet Machholz) or asteroid (e.g. ).
  • q stands for the perihelion distance of an orbit (mostly for cometary orbits).
• In biblical criticism, Q is an abbreviation used by scholars of the New Testament to describe the Q document, a hypothetical lost written "source" (German, Quelle, hence, Q) behind the Synoptic Gospels.
• In biochemistry, Q is the symbol for glutamine.
• In chemistry, Q is a symbol for the reaction quotient.
• In chess, Q is a notation symbol for the queen piece
• In computing:
  • Q is an "equational programming language"; see Q programming language.
  • Q is the runtime component of the QSDK.
  • Q is a Mac OS X emulator of a multitude of operating systems, including Windows; see Q (emulator).
• In electrical engineering:
  • Q is a symbol for characterizing electronic filters and other resonant systems; see Q factor. Q stands for quality.
  • Q represents electric charge, as in physics.
  • In QAM modulation schemes, Q is used to refer to the quadrature communications channel.
    • In the YIQ colorspace commonly used with the NTSC television encoding scheme, q is the color-difference channel which is in quadrature with the subcarrier.
• In English, Q can be an abbreviation for 'question', as in Q&A and FAQ.
• In finance, Q is the U.S. ticker symbol for Qwest Communications International Inc.
• In international licence plate codes, Q stands for Qatar.
• In Financial economics q stands for Tobin's-q.
• In marketing, Q is sometimes used as a synonym for Q Score
• In mathematics, blackboard bold $\backslash mathbb\{Q\}$ denotes the set of all rational numbers, while q is sometimes used as a variable standing for a single arbitrary prime number that is somehow larger than a prime number p. For example, $q\; =\; 2p\; +\; 1$ and .
  • In Mathematica, the Q in a command of the form PropertyQmeans that the built-in function is a Boolean function that tests whether or not the argument has the named property. For example, IntegerQ^*" target="_blank" >are both true. Some users use this convention for custom functions they create, for example, eisensteinIntegerQ^*.
• In mechanical engineering and civil engineering, Q is the symbol for volumetric flow rate.
• In medicine, Q is a bacterial infection; see Q fever. "q" also is a medical abbreviation for every, often used to specify drug dosing schedules (e.g., q6h indicates every 6 hours; q4w indicates 4 times per week).
• In military science, Q is the name for anti-submarine ships; see Q-ship.
• In phonetics, lowercase ^* is the International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for the voiceless uvular plosive.
• In physics, q (lowercase) is a symbol for electric charge or heat.
• In fusion power, Q is the symbol for the fusion energy gain factor
• In a deck of playing cards, Q is used to mark each of the queens.
• In publishing, Q is a British music magazine; see Q magazine
• In radiotelegraphy and amateur radio, the Q code is a set of three-letter code signals.
• In Scientology, Q refers to a "common denominator" of subsidiary information which forms a "pyramid of data" (from Scientology 0-8).
• In statistics, the Q Test helps in the decision to retain or discard questionable datum.
• In Taiwanese Mandarin slang, Q means "flexible." (The Roman letter is used.)
• In television, Q TV is a music video channel from the same people who produce Q magazine.
• In economics, Q is usually used to represent quantity.
• Q is an acronym for queue
• Q is an acronym for "queer", an appropriation of the historically pejorative word, now used neutrally or positively by those who strongly reject traditional gender identities.
• Q is another name of the Panasonic Q multimedia console,a hybrid of a DVD player and a GameCube.
• Q is the nickname for Quentin Richardson.
• Q is the commonly used abbreviation for the Greek telecom operator Q-telecom
• Q is an IRC-service (bot) on the popular IRC-network QuakeNet.

In entertainment

• In film, Q is a character in the James Bond series; see Q (James Bond).
• In science fiction, Q is a character from the Q Continuum (also referred to as "the Q"), originally played by John de Lancie in several Star Trek spin-off series; see Q (Star Trek).
• In British television, Q is a character (Nancy "Q" Cunard de Longchamps) portrayed by Rula Lenska from the BBC series the Rock Follies.
• In literature,
  • Q is the title of a historical novel by Luther Blissett; see Q (novel).
  • Q is the pen name of writer Arthur Quiller-Couch.
  • Q is the leading character in the famous Chinese novel A True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun. Because of this novel, "Ah Q" in China means someone who always claims spiritual victory despite frequent defeat.
• In video games, Q is a character in Capcom's Street Fighter series of fighting games.
• Q was the name for a number of comedy series written by and starring Spike Milligan
• Q is a 1982 movie about Quetzalcoatl in Manhattan

Q trivia

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• Q is the only letter that does not appear in any US state name
• People connected to an IRC-network with usermode +q are immune to bans, kicks and akicks.
• In the English alphabet, Q is the least used letter while E is the most frequent.

See also

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• List of English words containing Q not followed by U

Latin letters

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