Definitions of the word “o.”
O, o, letter
The fifteenth letter of the alphabet; a specimen of this letter.The ranges implacable aeiou ( Gourmont, Esthet. Lang. Fr . , 1899 , p.129).They eat and, after a moment’s silence, Z asks Y what has become of another of their friends: −And O? –Pets! Cure air: comfortable … [ P, Q, R, S ] ( P. Courtin, G.Kolebka, the restaurant, History talk with your mouth full ds Okapi, 1 st Jan 1983, n. O 267, p. 25):
1. I was made to play with letters early. At three years old, I repeated that the o is called o; the s was an s as a table; I knew more or less the alphabet, but the printed pages continued to be silent. One day, it clicked in my head. Beauvoir , Mem. j. girl , 1958 , p.24.
A. – [Attention is paid to elements of the ling structure.]
1. [letter and phone. Of the letter; the Attention is more partic. On the sign graph. As such, or on the phone value. Of the sign or on both]But, although whites did not speak like the whites here, their words they scolded like dogs all ended in o or a ( Borel, Champavert, 1833, p.86). Busch kept his big, pale eyes stubbornly fixed on the bills. (…) – It’s curious, he repeated once again, I have certainly seen similar a’s and o’s, so elongated, that they look like i’s ( Zola, Argent, 1891, p. 36). If not to change the example, all the sounds in o were rendered by the single letter o, in addition to the language losing one of its particular characters, which is to have no final syllable ending in an o, it would result in an unbearable monotony ( Gourmont, op. cit., p.70):
2. The voices, the various species of which are expressed by the letters called vowels, a, e, i, o, u, ai, EU, etc. We do not know what this modification of sound is due to, although we know well enough what movements man and animals must impart to their vocal organs to produce them. Cuvier, Anat. comp. , t.2, 1805, p.447.
– O short; o long; The o de Cotte, a kind of juppe, and the rib, a kind of bone, are two different voices ( Destutt de Tr. , Idéol. 2, 1803, p.329). The side of the choir, visible to Durtal, made all the vowels into sharp and short letters; the other, on the contrary, turned them into long ones, seemed to cap all the o with a circumflex accent ( Huysmans, En route, t.2, 1895, p.39).M.et M me Swann said hateful, making the o brief ( Proust, J. girls in flower, 1918, P.511):
3. He declared to me, in a tone of benevolent confidence, equal to equal, whose kindness delighted me: – She was there the young lady. I gave him the bouquet. (He pronounced “summer” and “bouqué”). “I said to him: It is a man who offers it to you.” (He put on offer a very open and very brief o, almost an a) … Romans, Men good flight. 1939, p.78.
− P. anal. He looked at everything, his mouth open and his eyebrows raised so high that they were afraid to see them curl into a capital o ( Hamp, Champagne, 1909, p.92).
– [Other attributes] :
4. O, supreme Bugle full of strange striders, Silences crossed by Worlds and Angels: – O the Omega, violet ray of His Eyes! Rimbaud, Poés. 1871, p.104.
♦ [Circularity of the graphic sign]The lawyer dictates letters to him one by one; we say to him: o, a circle; n, two jambs; two more jambs ( Gide, Journal, 1912, p.376).
♦ [Rounding of the lips]He saw the mouths open wide of the good villagers affect this form of o which, according to the master painters, is the supreme expression of astonishment ( Gautier, Fracasse, 1863, p.176). She was sleeping, mouth in o, legs in I ( Huysmans, Marthe, 1876, p.52). A young girl overturned, whose little mouth opened in an o, her corolla skirts crumpled around two amiable legs, endeavoured to express terror ( Colette, Mais. Cl., 1922, p.45).
♦ [Metaph. Solar]The figure of the letter o owes its origin to the round shape of the sun and its expression to that of admiration ( Bern. De St – P., Harm. Nat. , 1814, p.111). It is a golden name, joyful, with an inexpressible shade of evening. We only perceive it when we pronounce, with the appropriate velvet, this o full of a yellow sun and a sad and sweet feeling, which is what we call melancholy. La Borie des Sau … au … les ( Malègue , Augustin , t.1 , 1933 , p.31).
2. [The letter, constituent of words]The reunion of the three letters R, O, I lost all its talisman in Paris ( Stendhal, L. Leuwen, t.3, 1835, p.237). One could almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In the series, O and P are inseparable. You can, at will, pronounce O and P, or Oreste and Pylade ( Hugo, Misér. , T.1, 1862, p.785). Then, on the other side, in this guy so well-muscled, spinning a distaff, we immediately recognized the bad sleeper of ancient times, in the process of telling a certain nymph called .. called .. ah! my faith, Bernice, one does not know any more; its name begins with an O! ( Claudel, Ompdrailles, 1879, p.361).
B. – [The letter is used to form abbreviations, acronyms]
− The
♦ [In the vocabulary of chemical elements] Oxygen. Priestley’s green matter is a ferment that gives off O ( Cl. Bernard, Notes, 1860, p.187).
♦ MED. Abbrev. of Elem. occipito-, osteo-, too- . OI Occipito-iliac. OT Osteo-tendon. ENT Otorhinolaryngology.
− O.K.*
– OP, OQ, OS Professional worker, skilled worker, specialized worker.
– OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The European nuclear energy agency of the OECD studies the complex issues of setting up a joint, non-commercial enterprise ( Goldschmidt, Avent. Atom. , 1962, p.270).
[Acronyms that lend themselves to a pronouncement by accident or on purpose. syllabic]
♦ UN [ɔny]. United Nations Organization. Today, we no longer say UN; we knead this series of separate letters into a single continuous articulation: ONU ( Huyghe, Dialog. Avec visible, 1955, p.43).
♦ O.R.S.T.O.M. [ɔ ʀstɔm].The Overseas Scientific and Technical Research Office ( ORSTOM), born in 1944, is, together, a fundamental research body, a standard body for scientific and technical assistance, and a teaching body that trains, itself, its researchers oriented towards practical goals ( Perroux, Écon. XX the century, 1964, p.270).
♦ NATO [ctã], [ctan]. North Atlantic Treaty Organization.American atomic charges, which, in the event of a conflict, would be handed over to them under NATO rules ( Goldschmidt, op. cit., P.203).
