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
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
, 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
Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta.
Semitic may also refer to:
Religions
* Abrahamic religions
** ...
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
Phoenician may refer to:
* Phoenicia, an ancient civilization
* Phoenician alphabet
::Phoenician (Unicode block)
* Phoenicianism, a form of Lebanese nationalism
* Phoenician language
* List of Phoenician cities
* Phoenix, Arizona
See also
* Pho ...
form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, ''
upsilon
Upsilon (, ; uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; el, ''ýpsilon'' ) or ypsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, grc, Υʹ, label=none has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw .
Ety ...
'' (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
Digamma or wau (uppercase: Ϝ, lowercase: ϝ, numeral: ϛ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It originally stood for the sound but it has remained in use principally as