F

F or f is the sixth letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English is ef[1] (pronounced /ˈɛf/), plural efs.[2]

This article is about the letter of the alphabet. For other uses, see F (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with the long s, ſ.

F
F f
(See below)
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic
Language of origin	Latin language
Phonetic usage	[f] [ɸ~h] [ʍ~xʷ] [v] /ɛf/
Unicode value	U+0046, U+0066
Alphabetical position	6 Numerical value: 6
History
Development	Ϝ ϝ ϛ 𐌅 F f
Time period	~-700 to present
Descendants	• Ḟ  • ₣  • ℉  • ꟻ  • ꬵ  • ∫  • 𝆑
Sisters	U V W Y Ʊ У Ў Ұ Υ υ ו וּ וֹ و ۋ ܘ ࠅ 𐎆 𐌖 Վ վ Ո ո Ւ ւ և
Transliteration equivalents	U V W Y
Variations	(See below)
Other
Other letters commonly used with	f(x)
Associated numbers	6

History

Proto-Semitic W	Phoenician  waw	Greek Digamma	Etruscan V or W	Roman F

The origin of 'F' is the Semitic letter vâv (or 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 its antecedents in Greek and Etruscan did not have. The Roman alphabet forms the basis of the alphabet used today for English and many other languages.

Main article: Long s

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 systems

English

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 twelfth least frequently used letter in the English language (after C, 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. Að 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).

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.[3]

Related characters

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

• F with diacritics: Ƒ ƒ Ḟ ḟ Ꞙ ꞙ ᵮ ᶂ[4] ᵮ[5]
• Ꞙ ꞙ : F with stroke is used in the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system,[6] and older Ewe writing[7]
• ꬵ : Lenis F is used in the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system[6]
• ᶠ : Modifier letter small f is used for phonetic transcription[4]
• ꜰ : Small capital F was used in the Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise to mark gemination[8]
• Ꝼ ꝼ : Insular F is used in Norse and Old English contexts[9]
• ꟻ : Reversed F was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for filia (daughter) or femina (woman)[10]
• Ⅎ ⅎ : Claudian letters[11]
• 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, Latin capital letter F with stroke
• ℉ : degree Fahrenheit

Computing codes

Character information

Preview	F		f
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F		LATIN SMALL LETTER F
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	70	U+0046	102	U+0066
UTF-8	70	46	102	66
Numeric character reference	F	F	f	f
EBCDIC family	198	C6	134	86
ASCII ^1	70	46	102	66

¹ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Foxtrot	▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	Braille dots-124 Unified English Braille

References

1. Spelled eff when used as a verb
2. "F", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); "ef", "eff", "bee" (under "bee eff"), op. cit.
3. "Press F to pay respects". Retrieved 15 March 2020.
4. Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
5. Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF).
6. 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).
7. Latin Extended-D
8. 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).
9. Everson, Michael (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF).
10. Perry, David J. (2006-08-01). "L2/06-269: Proposal to Add Additional Ancient Roman Characters to UCS" (PDF).
11. 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