q

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The 17th letter of the modern English alphabet.
2. n. Any of the speech sounds represented by the letter q.
3. n. The 17th in a series.
4. n. Something shaped like the letter Q.
5. n. A hypothetical lost manuscript, consisting largely of sayings of Jesus, that is believed to have been the source of those passages in Matthew and Luke that bear close similarity to each other but not to parallel passages in Mark.
6. Physics The symbol for charge.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. The seventeenth letter and thirteenth consonant in the English alphabet. It had a corresponding position in the early Greek and in the Latin alphabet, as also in the Phenician, where it was the nineteenth character. Its value in Phenician was that of a deeper or more guttural k; and a like distinction of two k's, less and more guttural (kaf and qof), is still made in the Semitic languages generally. But in Greek and Latin there was no such distinction to be maintained; hence the sign was abandoned in Greek (being retained only as an episemon, or sign of number, in its old place between π and ρ, and called koppa); while in Latin, on the other hand, it was kept, though without a value different from that of k, in the combination qu, equivalent to our kw; and so we have it also in English as a superfluous letter, simply because it existed in Phenician with a real office. The comparative table of early forms (as given for the other letters: see especially A) is as follows:
2. As a medieval Roman numeral, 500.
3. An abbreviation: [lowercase] of quadrans (a farthing)
4. [lowercase] of query
5. [lowercase] of question
6. of queen
7. [lowercase] in a ship's logbook, of squalls
8. in Rom. lit. and inscriptions, of Quintus.
9. A half-farthing: same as cue, 2 .
10. n. An abbreviation of Queen's Bench.
11. n. An abbreviation: of Queen's Council or Queen's Counsel
12. n. of Queen's College.
13. n. or.
14. n. or.
15. n. An abbreviation of quartermaster.
16. n. An abbreviation of quarter-sessions.
17. n. or.
18. n. of the Latin phrase quantum sufficit.
19. n. An abbreviation of the Latin phrase quantum vis, ‘as much as you will’
20. n. of quod vide, ‘which see.’
21. An abbreviation in electrotechnics, of quantity;
22. [lowercase] of quasi;
23. [lowercase] of quintal;
24. of the Latin Quirites.
25. Same as cue, 3 : as, to give or take the Q.
26. In psychophysics, the symbol for the Fechnerian space-error.
27. An abbreviation of the Latin quasi dictum, as if said;
28. of the Latin quasi dixisset, as if he had said.
29. An abbreviation in psychophysics, of quotient limen;
30. [lowercase] of the Latin quantum libet, as much as is required.
31. Abbreviations of the Latin quantum placeat, as much as seems good.
32. A contraction of quiet.

Wiktionary

1. n. The seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.
2. n. voiceless uvular plosive.
3. n. physics electrical charge
4. n. physics heat
5. n. The seventeenth letter of the English alphabet, called cue and written in the Latin script.
6. n. The ordinal number seventeenth, derived from this letter of the English alphabet, called cue and written in the Latin script.
7. abbr. sports conditional qualification
8. abbr. question

GNU Webster's 1913

1. the seventeenth letter of the English alphabet, has but one sound (that of k), and is always followed by u, the two letters together being sounded like kw, except in some words in which the u is silent. See Guide to Pronunciation, § 249. Q is not found in Anglo-Saxon, cw being used instead of qu; as in cwic, quick; cwen, queen. The name (kū) is from the French ku, which is from the Latin name of the same letter; its form is from the Latin, which derived it, through a Greek alphabet, from the Phœnician, the ultimate origin being Egyptian.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the 17th letter of the Roman alphabet