UZES, a town of France, capital of a cognominal arrondissement in the department of Gard, is situated on the right bank of the Auzon, an affluent of the Gard, 12 miles N.N.E. of Nimes. It stands on the declivity of a hill from which issues the fountain of Eure, the waters of which were in ancient times conducted to Nimes by the Pont du Gard. Uzès was the seat of a bishop till the sixteenth century, when the bishop, clergy, and most of the inhabitants embraced Protestantism. The chief public buildings are the old episcopal palace and a castle, the former residence of the dukes of Uzès, the latter bearing a considerable resemblance to the Bastille of Paris. Uzès is the seat of a court of primary jurisdiction and a communal college, and has manufactures of silk, hosiery, coarse woollens, leather, and paper. Pop. (1856) 6315.
V or v, is properly a consonant, and as such is placed before all the vowels; as in vacant, venal, vibrate, &c. Though the letters v and u always had two sounds, they had only the form of v till the beginning of the fourth century, when the other form was introduced, the inconvenience of expressing two different sounds by the same letter having long before been observed. In numerals V stands for five; and with a dash added at top, thus, , it signifies 5000. (See ABBREVIATIONS.)