# General Information (U)

Ukulele
The ukulele is a four stringed, small guitar.

Ulti
Ulti is a trick-taking Hungarian card game for three players.

Ultramarine
Ultramarine is a blue pigment derived from lapis lazuli.

Ultrasonic
Ultrasonic is a term referring to sound waves higher in frequency than 15khz.

Umber
Umber is a substance comprised of hydrated ferric and manganese oxides with variable proportions of earthy matter. It is used as a brown pigment.

Umbra
Umbra is the astrological term for the shadow cast by a planet or satellite.

Umbrella
An umbrella is a light, portable screen usually circular and supported on a central stick. They are used as protection against the sun, and rain.

Umiak
An umiak (umiaq) is an open Eskimo boat that consists of a wooden frame covered with skins and provided with several thwarts. They are used for transporting passengers and goods.

Umiaq
Umiaq is the Inuit word for an umiak.

Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin was a story by Mrs H. Beecher-Stowe published in portions in a newspaper in 1850 and then in a complete form in 1852. The story set forth the evils of slavery and was an enormous seller and contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery in Britain.

Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya is a play by Anton Chekhov written in 1899.

Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a secret and philanthropical organisation which existed in the USA and Canada during the later years of slavery with the object of helping slaves escape bondage. Its chief centre was in Philadelphia. The Underground Railroad was a network of "safe houses" and individuals who aided escaped slaves to travel to primarily Canada.

Undertaker Wind
The Undertaker Wind is a prevailing wind which blows out from the island of Jamaica towards the sea during the night.

Undress Uniform
Undress Uniform is a military and naval term for a uniform worn other than on formal occasions.

Unicode
Unicode is a standard of computer character sets that aims to unambiguously represent every known glyph in every human language. Unicode's native encoding is 32 bit (older versions use 16 bits).

Union Jack
The Union Jack is the British flag. It was first produced in 1606 in response to a royal proclamation of James I with the object of providing a single flag for both England and Scotland which might put an end to disputes concerning the precedence of their respective banners of St George and St Andrew. The Union Flag combined the blazonry of the two rival ensigns, not marshalling them by Quartering, but by blending them into a single composition. This was achieved by charging the cross of St George with a narrow white border and placing it on the banner of St Andrew. On the first of January 1801 the second Union Jack superseded the flag of King James and Queen Anne with the incorporation of the banner of Ireland, the saltire of St Patrick, following the Union with Ireland.

Union of Calmar
Union of Calmar was a treaty whereby Denmark, Sweden and Norway were united under one sovereign, Margaret queen of Sweden and Norway. It was agreed in 1397 and dissolved by Gustavus Vassa in 1523.

Union Pacific Railroad
The Union Pacific Railroad was the first railway built across North America. It started from the Missouri at Omaha and met the Central Pacific Railroad building eastwards from San Francisco.

Union Suit
A union suit is a close-fitting, knitted undergarment combining a shirt and drawers in one piece and often have a drop seat.

Union-Castle Steamship Line
The Union Steam Collier Company was founded in 1853, and was renamed the Union Steamship Company in 1856. It comprised a service to the Cape of Good Hope, Natal and East Africa. The Castle Mail Packet Company was formed in 1881 carrying mail to South Africa and in 1900 the two companies amalgamated under the title of the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company.

Unipon
see "Dalapon"

United Nations
The United Nations is an international organisation for peace and security.

Universe
The universe is all of space and its contents.

Unix
UNIX (In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics") is an interactive time-sharing computer operating system originally invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a co-author of the system. The turning point in UNIX's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972--1974, making it the first source-portable OS. UNIX subsequently underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment.

Unsaturated compounds
In chemistry, unsaturated compounds are organic compounds containing double or triple bonds and are capable of forming addition products.

Unsaturated solution
In chemistry, an unsaturated solution is a solution containing less solute than the amount needed to make a saturated solution.

Upholstery
Upholstery is the art of covering the rigid frames of chairs, sofas, beds and other furniture with flexible material either naturally springy or made so by the introduction of steel springs.

Uraeus
A uraeus was a representation of a sacred asp worn on the headdress of ancient Egyptian royalty.

Uranium
Uranium is a silvery, heavy radioactive, polyvalent metallic element that is found especially in pitchblende and uraninite and exists naturally as a mixture of three radioactive isotopes of mass number 234, 235 and 238 in the proportions of .006%, .71% and 99.28% respectively. It has the symbol U.

Urdu
Urdu is a variety of the Hindustani language, from which it differs in its extensive borrowing of words from Arabic and Persian.

Urea
Urea is a crystalline substance, soluble in water which occurs in the urine of mammals, birds and reptiles. It was produced artificially by Wohler in 1828 by evaporating an aqueous solution of ammonium cyanate. This was the first synthesis of an organic compound from inorganic materials.

Uric acid
Uric acid is a nitrogen containing waste product found in the urine of birds and reptiles, but rarely mammals.

Usenet
Usenet (from `Users' Network') is a distributed bulletin board system supported mainly by UNIX computers. It was originally implemented in 1979-1980 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke University, it quickly grew to become international in scope and is now probably the largest decentralized information utility in existence.

Usher
An usher is a person who escorts people to their seats in a theatre, church or other place.

Usufruct
Usufruct was a term in Roman law signifyingthe right to reap the fruits or take the benefit of things belonging to others. It might exist in land, houses, slaves or anything that is not consumed by use. A usufructuary of land was in the same position as a tenant for life in England, with the addition that he had the right to open new mines and quarries.

Utopia
Utopia is a Greek word meaning 'nowhere' and the name for an ideal community. It is the title of the book written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More in which he describes an island with perfect inhabitants and laws.

Uttering
Uttering is the crime of knowing circulating counterfeit money with intent to defraud.

Copyright 1997,1998 Servile Software Enquiries to Matthew Probert

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