English words that end with V

In first grade, my teacher, Miss Bouclin, showed my class videos of the Letter People (or something like that). They tried to explain WHY V never ends a word.

The Letter People were playing a game where three letters are called to arrange themselves into a word. Vincent V caught the left side of his coat on something and ripped it. He was so embarrassed that he stayed away from the end of all the words, so nobody would see the hole in his jacket.

Let's see here... there ARE some words used in common English vernacular that are sort of abbreviated but still used as functioning words that end in V:

perv : Short for "pervert." As in "Don't be a perv, Bill. Put that back in your pants."

nav : Short for "navigation." Used often by graphic and web designers. As in, "So, Mike, what do you suggest we use for a nav menu? HTML or Flash?"

Bev : Short proper name for "Beverly." Often seen in Star Trek fiction (both canon and fanfic), in reference to Doctor Beverly Crusher.

Merv : Proper name of Merv Griffin. Dunno what it's short for, though- if anything. Probably Mervyn, according to a few MSG's that I've received so far.

Yugoslav : Short for Yugoslavia or Yugoslavic. Often heard in American news media- regardless of the fact that it's totally inappropriate use of grammar.

luv : Adaptation of the word "love." Often heard in reference to someone who is loved. As in, "Hello, luv. How are you today?"

I'm almost certain that there are more, but I can't think of any at the moment. All of the words mentioned above have been seen by myself in print at one time or another. Hope that helps.

In accordance with traditional Scrabble rules, we must omit proper nouns and abbreviations, since the number of those that end in "v" is potentially unlimited. However, that still leaves us with a pretty good selection. The following are culled from Merriam-Webster (www.m-w.com):

• leitmotiv, a variant of leitmotif (you'll almost always see it spelled with an "f", however)
• lev, a monetary unit used in Bulgaria
• maglev, a recent but legitimate word for a train which moves using magnetic levitation
• moshav, imported from Hebrew and roughly synonymous to kibbutz
• shiv, slang for a knife used as a weapon; rarely spelled "chiv"
• spiv, British slang for a flashy dresser "who lives by his wits without regular employment"; evolved from "spiff"
• vav (waw) and tav (taf), the sixth and twenty-second letters of the Hebrew alphabet
• avalyn says Recent happenings in the UK have birthed the word chav, although it hasn't been put in a dictionary (yet).