First proposed by Philologus in the July 1864Ladies' Repository, with possessivevis and objectivevim, as an alternative to using "he or she," singularthey, orone in sentences without a specified gender.[1] In 1970, Varda One proposedve,vis and objectivever in a feminist article titled "Manglish."[2]Greg Egan used the pronouns throughout the novelsDistress (1995) andDiaspora (1998).
And stop calling it 'it': yer got yer one great invention, remember Holmes? The neuter personal pronoun;ve/ver/vis, I am not his,vis/ve/ver, nor am I for her,ver/vis/ve, a pronoun for me, (slopping another tin of water out ready).]
1872, Charles Camden, “The Travelling Menagerie”, in George Mac Donald, editor,Good Words for the Young, London: Strahan & Co.,[…], chapter V (A Tiger Hunt in England), page208, column 1:
Ve vill go to de Sheafen Farm, andve vill stay at de Sheafen Farm, is it not?
From Old Tosk *vae, from Old Albanianvōe (still at Malagija),[1] fromProto-Indo-European*h₂ōwyóm(“egg”). Orel, citing Bopp, Camarda and Çabej, argues the Old Albanian word descends from a borrowing fromLatinōvum.[2] The PIE etymology was earlier supported by Norbert Jokl.
In some dialects of Catalan, the sounds associated with the letterb and the letterv are the same:[β]. In order to differentiate the namesbe andve in those dialects, the letters are often calledbe alta(“high B”) andve baixa(“low V”).
Third person pronominal forms used as formal terms of address to refer to second person subjects (with the first letter frequently capitalised as a sign of respect, and to distinguish them from third person subjects). Unlike the singular forms, the plural forms are mostly antiquated terms of formal address in the modern language, and second person plural pronouns are almost always used instead.
2
Also used as indefinite pronoun meaning “one”, and to form the passive.
《汉语拼音方案》 (Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet) defines a standard pronunciation for each letter in Hanyu Pinyin withZhuyin. In the case ofV, it is defined asㄪㄝ, using the otherwise-obsolete initialㄪ(vō/v/). This is one of the only instances of the letter being used in standard Pinyin.
《汉语拼音方案》 (Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet) defines a standard pronunciation for each letter in Hanyu Pinyin withZhuyin.ㄝ(/ɛ/) typically only occurs in syllables with an initial glide (e.g.ㄧㄝ(-ie/i̯ɛ/)), where it is romanized ase. When it occurs in syllables without an initial glide, however, it is romanized asê in order to distinguish it fromㄜ(-e/ɤ/). Such instances are rare, and are only found in interjections or neologisms.
Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the criticaltonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.
Cognate withDanishve,Icelandicvei, Old Saxon and Middle High Germanwê, Germanweh, Dutchwee, Old Englishwá, Englishwoe, and also Latinvae. The interjection is original in Old Swedish. The noun might have appeared from that interjection or by loan from Middle Low German.
(Thisetymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at theEtymology scriptorium. Particularly: “do the "cicada" and "tick" senses have a common etymology?”)
Thisetymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at theEtymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Often considered to be fromFrenchverre(“glass (substance); objects made of glass”). It is attested in P.J. Pigneaux's version of theDictionarium anamitico-latinum (1772). There's also the wordue inđạn ue attested in de Rhodes (1651), glossed in Portuguese asmunição, are these related? It did seem to tangle withverre in later period, but was the relationship between the two words genetic or contamination?”