THE LETTER F OF THE ALPHABET. This letter corresponds to the sixth letter of the Greek, Etruscan and Latin alphabets, known to the Greeks as digamma. The sound represented by the letter in Greek was a bilabial spirant simi lar to English w. This sound had disappeared early from the eastern Greek dialects, so that the eastern or Ionic alphabet contained no digamma. It was retained, however, in the Chalcidic and Corinthian alphabets, the sound remaining in these dialects through classical times. The form of the letter in Greek was p, ,, F or C. It does not occur in the Semitic alphabets. Its origin in the Greek alphabet has been a matter of dispute, some maintaining that it descends from Semitic vau and using as evidence the fact that N occurs as a form of the digamma in Crete, others that it was merely differentiated from the preceding letter by the omission of a horizontal stroke. In either case it is probable that the Greeks were not the innova tors, seeing that a form of the letter (1) occurs in the Lydian alphabet. The letter was probably contained in an Asianic alphabet from which Greek, Lydian and Etruscan were derived. The letter passed into the Latin alphabet from the Chalcidic, and we find it used in early inscriptions in combination with h to represent the unvoiced labial spirant (English f), e.g., in the word FHEFHAKED. The h was soon dropped, and the sound represented by the letter F alone. It had this value in Etruscan. It was not required in Latin to represent the bilabial spirant (w), for the Latins had taken the letter V to represent both this sound and the vowel U. It has represented the unvoiced labial spirant ever since.
In the Faliscan alphabet the letter had the curious form T, and in Latin there was a form 11 corresponding to the form II of the preceding letter. Latin cursive of the 5th century A.D. employed a lengthened form , and the letter was generally extended below the line in uncial writing, e.g., F. In Irish writing of the 7th century the form was J-, and the Carolingian with further ing of the top f . From this developed the modern minuscule f.
In music, F is the name of the sixth note of the musical al phabet, otherwise the fourth note of the scale of C. It also gives its name to the bass clef, whose distinguishing sign denotes the F line. Further, it serves as an abbreviation for forte (f) and fortissimo (ff) .