X. Y. Z. Correspondence, in U.S. history, is the name given to the despatches of the three commissioners to France, Marshall, Pinckney, and Gerry (see Vol. VII. p. 63), containing the insulting demands made by Talleyrand and the other Directors as the price of respect and courtesy to the American republic. In the otherwise complete copies published by congress President Adams substituted X. Y. and Z. for the names of Talleyrand's emissaries.

Y

the twenty-fifth letter of our alphabet, is derived from the Greek letter upsilon (see U), which had two forms, V and Y; the first was taken over to Italy with the original value (our u in 'rude'), which it still retains in Italian. In the classical age the Greek upsilon had acquired a thinner sound, nearly that of the French u, or the German ü in über, the digraph ou being employed by the Greeks to represent the older sound, which had been preserved in Latin. In the time of Cicero the symbol Y was borrowed by the Romans from Greece in order to transliterate the upsilon in Greek loan-words, the Greek ou and ō being transliterated by U, as in the word Lyewrgus. That Y was introduced into Italy before Z is shown by the relative position of the two letters in the alphabet. Our English use of y is unique. Save in a few exceptional cases where it is used, as in Latin, to transliterate Greek words, such as 'hyperbola,' 'hydrostatics,' 'tyrant,' or 'hypocrite,' it is not descended from upsilon, but from the Greek gamma; g in Middle English assuming a form which became so nearly identical with that of y that ultimately it replaced it, just as the resemblance of y to the rune thorn has led to our writing ye instead of the (see ALPHABET). The history of this change is curious. With the other Latin letters y was introduced into the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, retaining its Latin value, an i pronounced with the lips somewhat rounded; a sound which has passed into i or the neutral vowel, as in the words 'birth,' 'wright,' 'hill,' 'king,' 'evil,' 'her,' or 'worm,' which were originally spelt with y. Hence as a matter of fact the Anglo-Saxon y has left no lineal descendant in any modern English word. Meanwhile another letter resembling the form of y, but representing a different sound, was being evolved out of the Anglo-Saxon g, which weakened before or after front vowels; and having thus acquired two values, its Anglo-Saxon form ȝ was conveniently used to denote the weak sound, the Caroline form, g, being reserved for the stopped g. In Middle English this decayed sound was represented by ȝ, and in the 15th century the written forms of ȝ and y approximated so closely as to be almost indistinguishable. Hence, early in the 16th century, after the introduction of printing, the form y came to be generally used instead of ȝ, the Anglo-Saxon vocalic y being ultimately replaced by i, or some other vowel. Thus we obtain the double value of y in modern English. In such words as 'ye,' 'yes,' 'yea,' 'yet,' 'year,' which represent the Anglo-Saxon ge, gese, gea, git, gear, the sign y is not really a y, but stands for the Middle English ȝ, which is the Anglo-Saxon form of g. A y appears before back vowels in 'young' and 'yard' owing to the loss of the front vowel in the Anglo-Saxon geong and geard. It has also been introduced by analogy into the words 'you' and 'yew,' from the Anglo-Saxon eōw and eow, but not into the homophone 'ewe,' from the Anglo-Saxon eōwu. In some modern loan-words, such as 'yacht,' 'yawl,' and 'Yakut,' it has been introduced to transliterate the continental j. The final y, so common in English, also represents an Anglo-Saxon g, as in the words 'lady,' 'army,' 'many,' 'busy,' 'empty,' 'body,' 'day,' 'key,' 'may,' 'say,' 'gray,' 'eye.' By analogy it has crept into words of a different origin, such as 'jolly' (Old Fr. jolif), 'tardy' (Fr. tardif), 'crockery,' 'jetty,' 'nummery,' and 'mummy.' In 'by' and 'my,' and perhaps in 'sky,' it has been introduced from analogy with such words as 'dry,' 'fly,' and 'shy,' where the y is really the Middle English ȝ. In the 14th century a fashion set in of substituting the vocalic y for i. This fashion disappeared in the 16th century, leaving a trace in the y of rhyme, a misspelling for riime, which has been retained owing to the erroneous notion that it was a loan-word from the Greek rhythmos, and not the Anglo-Saxon rim. Also by analogy y represents the final vowel in such Greek loan-words as 'academy' or 'irony.' Our peculiar consonantal sound of y, due as we have seen to the weakening of the Anglo-Saxon g, is unknown on the Continent, where its place has been taken by the evolution of a consonantal j, as in jule and jahr, our 'yule' and 'year.' Our own consonantal j is due to French influence, as in the words 'journey,' 'jest,' 'jewel,' 'Jane.' Italian has discarded y, replacing it by i. In other continental languages, with a few exceptions (such as the French pronominal y, derived from Latin ibi), it is normally used, as in Latin, for transliterating upsilon in Greek loan-words.