F, the 6th letter in the modern latin alphabet, likely was born as an egyptian hieroglyph representing a club, or a mace. The semites took it and renamed it 'vâv', but kept its meaning of 'club', or 'mallet'.
In the Phoenician alphabet, it was written as a line with a circle on top – completely different to what it looks like now. The Greeks adopted the letter but converted it to a vowel – Upsilon. This was linked to the letter Y but was also commonly used as a U, V or W in the Roman alphabet. The letter F is also commonly linked to the consonant digamma, in the Ancient Greek alphabet.
The written letter has been through a number of changes throughout history. It is now written as a vertical line with two horizontal lines connected at the top and the middle. The lower case letter usually has a curl at the top, instead of a straight line and also sometimes has a curl at the bottom of the vertical line.
The F has a variety of sounds in different languages and there are also different letters that are commonly made to sound like an F. The most common is found in the German language, where Vs have an F sound. In history, the F used to have a long S sound but this disappeared during the 19th century.
The letter F is the lowest grade that many students will receive in school grades. This is marked as a fail and means that the student has a lot of work to do. However, this is not a grade in the UK markings – this is because anything lower than an E is classed as unmarkable and is given a U grade.
The letter F is also a musical note and is between E and G. It will also commonly be written with a sharp sign afterwards, to donate that the tone is supposed to be a semitone higher. An F flat is not common, depending on the key, since it is the E note.
F is a rather rare and valuable letter in Scrabble, with only 2 tiles representing it. Each tile will yield 4 points. It makes sense to hold on to the F if you happen to get it until a bonus position opens up where you can place it. Since it is a rare letter, it can often be used to extend already laying words, like 'IN' can become 'FIN', if there is a bonus position open.