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Old Church Slavonic
Letter
- A letter of the Old Church Slavonic alphabet, called ижица (ižica), and written in the Old Cyrillic script.
Usage notes
Used to denote the sound when in a syllabic position and when in a consonantal position, analogous to Greek upsilon. In some texts, however, ižica was used to denote exclusively, whereas was written as ѷ (ižica with kendima) instead.
See also
(Old Cyrillic-script letters) А а, Б б, В в, Г г, Д д, Е е (Є є), Ж ж, Ѕ ѕ (Ꙃ ꙃ), З з (Ꙁ ꙁ), И и, І і (Ї ї), Ꙉ ꙉ, К к, Л л, М м, Н н, О о, П п, Р р, С с, Т т, Оу оу (Ꙋ ꙋ), Ф ф, Х х, Ѡ ѡ (Ѿ ѿ), Ц ц, Ч ч, Ш ш, Щ щ, Ъ ъ, Ꙑ ꙑ, Ь ь, Ѣ ѣ, Ꙗ ꙗ, Ѥ ѥ, Ю ю, Ѫ ѫ, Ѭ ѭ, Ѧ ѧ (Ꙙ ꙙ), Ѩ ѩ (Ꙝ ꙝ), Ѯ ѯ, Ѱ ѱ, Ѳ ѳ, Ѵ ѵ, Ҁ ҁ
Russian
Letter
ѵ • (i) (lower case, upper case Ѵ)
- (obsolete) A letter of the Russian alphabet, called и́жица (ížica), and written in the Cyrillic script.
Usage notes
In Russian, this letter was used for the letter υ (u, upsilon). It was pronounced by itself, and or after a vowel; similar to its counterpart in modern Greek.
Since the 18th century, the letter izhitsa became rarely used in Russian, until in the early 20th century it consistently appeared in one word, мѵро (miro, “myrrh”) and derived words. There were several other terms that were sometimes written with the izhitsa, such as сѵнодъ (sinod, “synod”), Сѵрія (Sirija, “Syria”), and ѵпостась (ipostasʹ, “hypostasis; the being of Jesus Christ”).
It was finally eliminated during the spelling reform of 1918, though remained in use until the 1950s as a designation for a series of Russian – later Soviet – steam locomotives; these being withdrawn in the 1950s.
References
- Dal, Vladimir (1880–1882) “И (ижица)”, in Толковый Словарь живаго великорускаго языка [Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language] (in Russian), 2nd edition, Publication of the bookseller-typographer Wolf, M. O.