Ur- [German: ur- original] the original, primitive form, i.e. the Ur-Hamlet.
I was reading one of my favorite authors yesterday, the MacCarthur genius award winning Harold Bloom. The Western Canon is an enticing and stimulating cornucopia of information that keeps me running to the dictionary and encyclopedia to dispel the cobwebs from my brain pan (to quote Cervantes).
In any case, since I am reading many of Shakespeare's plays now, I picked up his voluminous book on Shakespeare, Shakespeare, The Invention of the Human, that comments on all of the plays. In his discussion of Hamlet, he postulates that this had been initially written ten years prior and that Shakespeare had let it brew for awhile, later having re-written it. Bloom then referred to the original version, the ”Ur-Hamlet." I was gratified that I had read the "U's."
In German, ur- is pronounced more like "oo" as in 'oops' with with there rolling r at the end i.e. ursprache: primitive language; urschleim: protoplasm.
uraeus [Greek, ouraios snake] /yu ‘ree us/ the sacred asp (snake) seen on Egyptian rulers’ headdresses signifying their sovereignty
Uranus: [Greek, Ouranus] Greek god of the sky
Uranus was father of the Titans.
Urania: [Greek, ourano sky] Greek muse of astronomy
Urdu: [Sanskrit, camp language] official language of Pakistan; a form of Hindu, used by Muslims in Pakistan and in India
urodele [French urodele, Greek oura tail] /yur’ ah deel/ amphibians that have a tail throughout their lives, i.e. a newt.
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