List of English Words Containing Q Not Followed By U

List Of English Words Containing Q Not Followed By U

In English, the letter Q is usually 'followed by' the letter U, but there are some exceptions. The majority of these are anglicised from Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Inuktitut, or other languages which do not use the English alphabet, with Q representing a sound not found in English. For example, in the Chinese pinyin alphabet, qi is pronounced /tʃi/ by an English speaker, as pinyin uses ⟨q⟩ to represent the sound, which is approximated as in English. In other examples, Q represents in standard Arabic, such as in qat, faqir and Qur'ān. In Arabic, the letter ق, traditionally romanised as Q, is quite distinct from ك, traditionally romanised as K; for example, قلب /qalb/ means "heart" but كلب /kalb/ means "dog". However, alternative spellings are sometimes accepted which use K (or sometimes C) in place of Q; for example, Koran (Qur'ān) and Cairo (al-Qāhira).

Of the 71 words in this list, 67 are nouns, and most would generally be considered loanwords; the only modern-English words that contain Q not followed by U and are not borrowed from another language are qiana, qwerty, and tranq. However, all of the loanwords on this list are considered to be naturalised in English according to at least one major dictionary (see References), often because they refer to concepts or societal roles that do not have an accurate equivalent in English. For words to appear here, they must appear in their own entry in a dictionary; words which occur only as part of a longer phrase are not included.

Proper nouns are not included in the list. There are, in addition, many place names and personal names, mostly originating from North Africa, the Middle East or China, that have a Q without a U. The most familiar of these are the countries of Iraq and Qatar, along with the derived words Iraqi and Qatari. Iqaluit, the capital of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, also has a Q which is not directly followed by a U. Qaqortoq, in Greenland, is notable for having three naked Qs. Other proper names and acronyms that have attained the status of English words include: Compaq (a computer company), Nasdaq (a US electronic stock market), Qantas (an Australian airline), and QinetiQ (a British technology company). Zaqqum (a tree mentioned in the Qur'an) and Saqqara (an ancient burial ground in Egypt) are proper nouns notable for their use of a double Q.