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F, or f, is the sixth
letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
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'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''.


History

The origin of 'F' is the Semitic letter '' waw'' that represented a sound like or . 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)): T3 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 , as in Phoenician. Latin 'F,' despite being pronounced differently, is ultimately descended from digamma and closely resembles it in form. After sound changes eliminated 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 , as in Greek, and the Etruscans formed the digraph 'FH' to represent . (At the time these letters were borrowed, there was no Greek letter that represented /f/: the Greek letter
phi Phi (; uppercase Φ, lowercase φ or ϕ; grc, ϕεῖ ''pheî'' ; Modern Greek: ''fi'' ) is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In Archaic and Classical Greek (c. 9th century BC to 4th century BC), it represented an aspirated voicele ...
'Φ' then represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive , although in Modern Greek it has come to represent .) When the Romans adopted the alphabet, they used 'V' (from Greek ''upsilon'') not only for the vowel , but also for the corresponding semivowel , leaving 'F' available for . 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 long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" and "po� ...
). 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 systems


English

In the English writing system is used to represent the sound , the voiceless labiodental fricative. It is often doubled at the end of words. Exceptionally, it represents the voiced labiodental fricative 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, commonly represents , or . * In French orthography, is used to represent . It may also be silent at the end of words. * In Spanish orthography, is used to represent . * In the Hepburn romanization of
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
, is used to represent . This sound is usually considered to be an
allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
of , which is pronounced in different ways depending upon its context; Japanese is pronounced as before . * In Welsh orthography, represents while represents . * In Slavic languages, is used primarily in words of foreign (Greek, Latin, or Germanic) origin. * In spoken Icelandic, in the middle of a word is often pronounced as a v (e.g. Að sofa - to sleep).


International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses to represent the voiceless labiodental fricative.


In mathematics

An italic letter is conventionally used to denote an arbitrary
function Function or functionality may refer to: Computing * Function key, a type of key on computer keyboards * Function model, a structured representation of processes in a system * Function object or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-oriente ...
. See also f with hook (ƒ).


In music

A bold italic letter is used in musical notation as a dynamic indicator for "loud or strong". It stands for the
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional It ...
word ''forte''.


In education

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.


Related characters


Ancestors, descendants and siblings

* F with diacritics: ** Ƒ ƒ ** Ḟ ḟ ** ᵮ ** ** Ꞙ ꞙ : F with stroke is used in the Anthropos phonetic transcription system and older Ewe writing * ꬵ : Lenis F is used in the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system * f: Superscript "f", encoded as in the Phonetic Extensions Supplement block of Unicode, is used in some forms of the International Phonetic Alphabet. * ꜰ : Small capital F was used in the Icelandic
First Grammatical Treatise The First Grammatical Treatise ( is, Fyrsta málfræðiritgerðin ) is a 12th-century work on the phonology of the Old Norse or Old Icelandic language. It was given this name because it is the first of four grammatical works bound in the Icelandic ...
to mark
gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
* ꟳ : Modifier letter capital F - Used to mark tone for the Chatino orthography in Oaxaca, Mexico; Used as a generic transcription for a falling tone; Used in para-
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
notation * Ꝼ ꝼ : Insular F is used in Norse and Old English contexts * ꟻ : Reversed F was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for (daughter) or (woman) * Ⅎ ⅎ :
Claudian letters The Claudian letters were developed by the Roman emperor Claudius (reigned 41–54). He introduced three new letters to the Latin alphabet: *Ↄ or ↃϹ/X (''antisigma'') to replace BS and PS, much as X stood in for CS and GS. The shape o ...
* 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 V


Ligatures and abbreviations

* ₣ :
French franc The franc (, ; sign: F or Fr), also commonly distinguished as the (FF), was a currency of France. Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money. It wa ...
, Latin capital letter F with stroke * :
degree Fahrenheit The Fahrenheit scale () is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). It uses the degree Fahrenheit (symbol: °F) as the unit. Several accounts of how he originally defined his ...


Code points

These are the code points for the forms of the letter in various systems : 1


Other representations


Use as a number

In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, F is a number that corresponds to the number 15 in decimal (base 10) counting.


Notes


References


External links

* * * {{Latin alphabet, F} ISO basic Latin letters