• twenty-fifth letter of the Latin alphabet, twentieth consonant OR sixth vowel (considered a semivowel)
  • phonetic name: "palatal approximant"; press your tongue to your palate and slowly release with a voice
  • Egyptian hieroglyph was two sprouted reeds
  • Phoencian letter was waw (just like F)
  • adopted by Greeks as upsilon (uppercase Υ, lowercase υ)
  • Y and U were often used interchangeably in Rome; it also had a numeric value of 150
  • in Middle English, Y began replacing vowel I; also, Y sometimes stood in for "th" (i.e.: "the" became "eye" or "ye', as in "Ye Olde English Pub")
  • uppercase Y often looks like a small V placed on a small I
  • Y becomes IE at the end of a word becoming pluralized
  • the letter 'y' in spanish means "and"
  • associated with femininity, Pythagoras, receptiveness
  • the shape of Y is closely tied to that of a tree (in particular, the Tree of Samos, or Pythagoras' letter); Pythagoras used Y as a symbol of the divergent paths of virtue and vice
  • Y shape was popular in Renaissance writing and art because of its association with life's directions and choices
  • like V, Y recalls female genitalia, with an added stem that could represent the opposite sex. This is sometimes associated with balanced loving relationships, or, androgyny
  • Y also radiates a sense of happiness or rejoice as a human form with its arms raised in the air
  • in biology, men have XY sex chromosomes (women have XX)
  • in algebra, Y stands for an unknown variable, secondary to X
  • in graphs, the Y axis runs vertically
  • in printing, Y stands for yellow (CMYK)
  • in electricity, Y stands for admittance
  • Y with two horizontal strokes, ¥, is the currency sign for the Japanese yen
  • Y in a circle, Ⓨ, is a symbol for Japanese resale price maintenance
  • Y is a type of silver moth, as well as a type of gapeworm
  • Y can abbreviate the pronoun "you"
  • Y can abbreviate the affirmative "yes"
  • Y can also abbreviate year
  • Y sometimes refers to the YMCA
  • Y can represent many things that separate or connect: railroads, highways, guns, telescopes, ligaments, gutters, tubes
  • Y is the amino acid tyrosine
  • Y is the chemical symbol for yttrium (#39 on the periodic table), a silvery-metallic element found in most rare-earth minerals. It is used as a "phosphor" to produce the red colour in television screens.
  • Generation Y (also known as the Millennium Generation or Millennials) refers to the group of people born between 1980 and 2000. Generally, they have an increased use and familiarity with communications, media, and technology, and a neo-liberal approach to politics and economics.
  • phonetic sound, "why", asks for a reason
  • NATO phonetic alphabet: YANKEE
  • "The sound vibration of the consonant 'Y' means 'awareness'." - Joseph E. Rael
  • "'Y' is a tree, a fork, the confluence of two rivers, a stemmed glass, a man with arms upstretched." - Victor Hugo