The origin of 'F' is the Semitic letter waw that represented a sound like /v/ or /w/. Graphically it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club. It may have been based on a comparable Egyptian hieroglyph such as that which represented the word mace (transliterated as ḥ(dj)):
The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, upsilon (which resembled its descendant 'Y' but was also the ancestor of the Roman letters 'U', 'V', and 'W'); and, with another form, as a consonant, digamma, which indicated the pronunciation /w/, as in Phoenician. Latin 'F,' despite being pronounced differently, is ultimately descended from digamma and closely resembles it in form.
After sound changes eliminated /w/ from spoken Greek, digamma was used only as a numeral. However, the Greek alphabet also gave rise to other alphabets, and some of these retained letters descended from digamma. In the Etruscan alphabet, 'F' probably represented /w/, as in Greek, and the Etruscans formed the digraph 'FH' to represent /f/. (At the time these letters were borrowed, there was no Greek letter that represented /f/: the Greek letter phi 'Φ' then represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive/ph/, although in Modern Greek it has come to represent /f/.) When the Romans adopted the alphabet, they used 'V' (from Greek upsilon) not only for the vowel /u/, but also for the corresponding semivowel /w/, leaving 'F' available for /f/. And so out of the various vav variants in the Mediterranean world, the letter F entered the Roman alphabet attached to a sound which the Greeks did not have. The Roman alphabet forms the basis of the alphabet used today for English and many other languages.
The lowercase 'f' is not related to the visually similar long s, 'ſ' (or medial s). The use of the long s largely died out by the beginning of the 19th century, mostly to prevent confusion with 'f' when using a short mid-bar.
In the Hepburn romanization of Japanese, ⟨f⟩ is used to represent [ɸ]. This sound is usually considered to be an allophone of /h/, which is pronounced in different ways depending upon its context; Japanese /h/ is pronounced as [ɸ] before /u/.
In countries such as the United States, the letter "F" is defined as a failure in terms of academic evaluation. Other countries that use this system include Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and the Netherlands.
In computing
In the hexadecimal number system, the letter "F" or "f" is used to represent the hexadecimal digit fifteen (equivalent to 1510).
Other uses
The letter F has become an Internet meme, where it is used to pay respects. This use is derived from the 2014 video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, where in a quick-time event protagonist Jack Mitchell must pay his respects to his friend Will Irons who fell in combat in a previous mission, represented by the player pressing F when playing the PC version. People on the Internet use the letter F usually in a genuine way to express respects, sadness or condolences towards other Internet personalities, Internet memes or other players on certain events, such as death, misfortune or the end of a phenomenon, company, game, series, etc.[4]
ꟳ : Modifier letter capital F[11] - Used to mark tone for the Chatino orthography in Oaxaca, Mexico; Used as a generic transcription for a falling tone; Used in para-IPA notation
Ꝼ ꝼ : Insular F is used in Norse and Old English contexts[12]
ꟻ : Reversed F was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for filia (daughter) or femina (woman)[13]
𐌅 : Old Italic V/F (originally used for V, in languages such as Etruscan and Oscan), which derives from Greek Digamma, and is the ancestor of modern Latin F
^Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF).
^Miller, Kirk; Cornelius, Craig (2020-09-25). "L2/20-251: Unicode request for modifier Latin capital letters" (PDF).
^Everson, Michael (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF).
^Perry, David J. (2006-08-01). "L2/06-269: Proposal to Add Additional Ancient Roman Characters to UCS" (PDF).
^Everson, Michael (2005-08-12). "L2/05-193R2: Proposal to add Claudian Latin letters to the UCS" (PDF).
External links
Media related to F at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionary definition of F at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of f at Wiktionary
January 10, 2023
this, article, about, letter, alphabet, other, uses, disambiguation, confused, with, long, technical, reasons, terms, beginning, with, redirect, here, other, uses, sharp, bois, sixth, letter, latin, alphabet, used, modern, english, alphabet, alphabets, other, . This article is about the letter of the alphabet For other uses see F disambiguation Not to be confused with the long s ſ For technical reasons terms beginning with F redirect here For other uses see F sharp and F bois F or f is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet used in the modern English alphabet the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide Its name in English is ef note 1 pronounced ˈ ɛ f and the plural is efs 1 FF f See below UsageWriting systemLatin scriptTypeAlphabeticLanguage of originLatin languagePhonetic usage f ɸ h ʍ xʷ v ɛ f Unicode codepointU 0046 U 0066Alphabetical position6Numerical value 6 15HistoryDevelopmentϜ ϝ ϛ𐌅F fTime period 700 to presentDescendantsḞ ꟻꬵ SistersUVWYƱϜUЎҰY yו ו ו ﻭ ۋ ܘࠅ𐎆𐌖Վ վՈ ոՒ ւևTransliteration equivalentsUVWYVariations See below OtherOther letters commonly used withf x Associated numbers6 15This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA For an introductory guide on IPA symbols see Help IPA For the distinction between and see IPA Brackets and transcription delimiters Contents 1 History 2 Use in writing systems 2 1 English 2 2 Other languages 2 3 International Phonetic Alphabet 2 4 In mathematics 2 5 In music 2 6 In education 2 7 In computing 3 Other uses 4 Related characters 4 1 Ancestors descendants and siblings 4 2 Ligatures and abbreviations 5 Code points 6 Other representations 7 Use as a number 8 Notes 9 References 10 External linksHistoryProto Semitic Phoenicianwaw Early GreekDigamma GreekDigamma EtruscanV or W LatinF The origin of F is the Semitic letter waw that represented a sound like v or w Graphically it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club It may have been based on a comparable Egyptian hieroglyph such as that which represented the word mace transliterated as ḥ dj The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel upsilon which resembled its descendant Y but was also the ancestor of the Roman letters U V and W and with another form as a consonant digamma which indicated the pronunciation w as in Phoenician Latin F despite being pronounced differently is ultimately descended from digamma and closely resembles it in form After sound changes eliminated w from spoken Greek digamma was used only as a numeral However the Greek alphabet also gave rise to other alphabets and some of these retained letters descended from digamma In the Etruscan alphabet F probably represented w as in Greek and the Etruscans formed the digraph FH to represent f At the time these letters were borrowed there was no Greek letter that represented f the Greek letter phi F then represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive ph although in Modern Greek it has come to represent f When the Romans adopted the alphabet they used V from Greek upsilon not only for the vowel u but also for the corresponding semivowel w leaving F available for f And so out of the various vav variants in the Mediterranean world the letter F entered the Roman alphabet attached to a sound which the Greeks did not have The Roman alphabet forms the basis of the alphabet used today for English and many other languages The lowercase f is not related to the visually similar long s ſ or medial s The use of the long s largely died out by the beginning of the 19th century mostly to prevent confusion with f when using a short mid bar Use in writing systemsEnglish In the English writing system f is used to represent the sound f the voiceless labiodental fricative It is often doubled at the end of words Exceptionally it represents the voiced labiodental fricative v in the common word of F is the eleventh least frequently used letter in the English language after G Y P B V K J X Q and Z with a frequency of about 2 23 in words Other languages In the writing systems of other languages f commonly represents f ɸ or v In French orthography f is used to represent f It may also be silent at the end of words In Spanish orthography f is used to represent f In the Hepburn romanization of Japanese f is used to represent ɸ This sound is usually considered to be an allophone of h which is pronounced in different ways depending upon its context Japanese h is pronounced as ɸ before u In Welsh orthography f represents v while ff represents f In Slavic languages f is used primarily in words of foreign Greek Latin or Germanic origin In spoken Icelandic f in the middle of a word is often pronounced as a v e g Ad sofa to sleep International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet uses f to represent the voiceless labiodental fricative In mathematics An italic letter f is conventionally used to denote an arbitrary function See also f with hook ƒ In music A bold italic letter f is used in musical notation as a dynamic indicator for loud or strong It stands for the Italian word forte 2 3 In education Main article Academic grading in the United States In countries such as the United States the letter F is defined as a failure in terms of academic evaluation Other countries that use this system include Saudi Arabia Venezuela and the Netherlands In computing In the hexadecimal number system the letter F or f is used to represent the hexadecimal digit fifteen equivalent to 1510 Other usesThe letter F has become an Internet meme where it is used to pay respects This use is derived from the 2014 video game Call of Duty Advanced Warfare where in a quick time event protagonist Jack Mitchell must pay his respects to his friend Will Irons who fell in combat in a previous mission represented by the player pressing F when playing the PC version People on the Internet use the letter F usually in a genuine way to express respects sadness or condolences towards other Internet personalities Internet memes or other players on certain events such as death misfortune or the end of a phenomenon company game series etc 4 Related charactersAncestors descendants and siblings F with diacritics Ƒ ƒ Ḟ ḟ ᵮ 5 ᶂ 6 Ꞙ ꞙ F with stroke is used in the Anthropos phonetic transcription system 7 8 and older Ewe writing 9 ꬵ Lenis F is used in the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system 7 f Superscript f encoded as U 1DA0 ᶠ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL F in the Phonetic Extensions Supplement block of Unicode is used in some forms of the International Phonetic Alphabet 6 ꜰ Small capital F was used in the Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise to mark gemination 10 Modifier letter capital F 11 Used to mark tone for the Chatino orthography in Oaxaca Mexico Used as a generic transcription for a falling tone Used in para IPA notation Ꝼ ꝼ Insular F is used in Norse and Old English contexts 12 ꟻ Reversed F was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for filia daughter or femina woman 13 Ⅎ ⅎ Claudian letters 14 𐤅 Semitic letter Waw from which the following symbols originally derive Ϝ ϝ Greek letter Digamma from which F derives 𐌅 Old Italic V F originally used for V in languages such as Etruscan and Oscan which derives from Greek Digamma and is the ancestor of modern Latin F Y y Latin letter Y sharing its roots with F V v Latin letter V also sharing its roots with F U u Latin letter U which is descended from V W w Latin letter W also descended from VLigatures and abbreviations French franc Latin capital letter F with stroke degree FahrenheitCode pointsThese are the code points for the forms of the letter in various systems Character information Preview F fUnicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F LATIN SMALL LETTER FEncodings decimal hex dec hexUnicode 70 U 0046 102 U 0066UTF 8 70 46 102 66Numeric character reference amp 70 wbr amp x46 wbr amp 102 wbr amp x66 wbr EBCDIC family 198 C6 134 86ASCII 1 70 46 102 661 Also for encodings based on ASCII including the DOS Windows ISO 8859 and Macintosh families of encodings Other representationsNATO phonetic Morse codeFoxtrot Signal flag Flag semaphore American manual alphabet ASL fingerspelling British manual alphabet BSL fingerspelling Braille dots 124 Unified English BrailleUse as a numberIn the hexadecimal base 16 numbering system F is a number that corresponds to the number 15 in decimal base 10 counting Notes Spelled eff when used as a verbReferences F Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition 1989 ef eff bee under bee eff op cit Randel Don Michael 2003 The Harvard Dictionary of Music 4th ed Cambridge MA Harvard University Press Reference Library Forte Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary Archived from the original on 20 October 2014 Retrieved 19 March 2012 Press F to pay respects Retrieved 15 March 2020 Constable Peter 2003 09 30 L2 03 174R2 Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS PDF a b Constable Peter 2004 04 19 L2 04 132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS PDF a b Everson Michael Dicklberger Alois Pentzlin Karl Wandl Vogt Eveline 2011 06 02 L2 11 202 Revised proposal to encode Teuthonista phonetic characters in the UCS PDF Heepe Martin 1928 Lautzeichen und ihre Anwendung in verschiedenen Sprachgebieten in German Berlin Reichsdruckerei Latin Extended D PDF Everson Michael Baker Peter Emiliano Antonio Grammel Florian Haugen Odd Einar Luft Diana Pedro Susana Schumacher Gerd Stotzner Andreas 2006 01 30 L2 06 027 Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS PDF Miller Kirk Cornelius Craig 2020 09 25 L2 20 251 Unicode request for modifier Latin capital letters PDF Everson Michael 2006 08 06 L2 06 266 Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS PDF Perry David J 2006 08 01 L2 06 269 Proposal to Add Additional Ancient Roman Characters to UCS PDF Everson Michael 2005 08 12 L2 05 193R2 Proposal to add Claudian Latin letters to the UCS PDF External links Media related to F at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of F at Wiktionary The dictionary definition of f at Wiktionary Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title F amp oldid 1132549978, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
