U vocabulary

Words beginning with the letter "U" encountered online. The list is short with only 5 entries.

* Ultima Ratio Regum: The last resort. Short form for the metaphor "The Last Resort of Kings and Common Men" referring to the act of declaring war; used in the names the French sniper rifle PGM Ultima Ratio and the fictional Reason weapon system. Louis XIV of France had Ultima Ratio Regum ("last argument of kings") cast on the cannons of his armies; motto of the 1st Battalion 11th Marines; motto of the Artilleriregementet.

* ultra vires:  "beyond powers," in the law of corporations, referring to acts of a corporation and/or its officers outside the powers and/or authority allowed a corporation by law. Example: Directors of Highfliers, Inc. operate a small bank for its employees and friends, which corporate law does not permit without a bank charter, or sells shares of stock to the public before a permit is issued.

* untermensch: Term from Nazi racial ideology used to describe "inferior people", especially "the masses from the East," that is Jews, Gypsies, Poles along with other Slavic people like the Russians, Serbs, Ukrainians and anyone else who was not an "Aryan" according to the contemporary Nazi race terminology. The German word Mensch literally means human.

* Uranian: A 19th century term that referred to a person of a third sex — originally, someone with "a female psyche in a male body" who is sexually attracted to men, and later extended to cover homosexual gender variant females, and a number of other sexual types. The term was adopted by English-language advocates of homosexual emancipation in the Victorian era, such as Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, who used it to describe a comradely love that would bring about true democracy, uniting the "estranged ranks of society" and breaking down class and gender barriers. Oscar Wilde wrote to Robert Ross in an undated letter (?18 February 1898): "To have altered my life would have been to have admitted that Uranian love is ignoble. I hold it to be noble - more noble than other forms."

* uxorious: foolishly fond of or submissive to your wife. in a loving and uxorious manner; "he kept deferring uxoriously to Mary"