A posteriori

FIGURE OF SPEECH: A scheme or a trope used for rhetorical or artistic effect. See figurative language, above.

FILI: A class of learned Irish poet in pre-Christian and early Christian Ireland. Legally, a fili had similar status to a Christian bishop, and in pagan times, the fili carried out some spells and divinations appropriate to the druids, the priestly class among the Celts.

FILK: A specialized type of folk music or alternative music, often with narrative lyrics, that usually deals with science fiction or fantasy themes and characters. The subject-matter is often not original to the musician, but rather taken from literature, pulp fiction, movies, and pop culture. In some cases, the song retells a story written by a famous science fiction author or explores in greater detail a particular scene or character first created by that author. Because this subgenre often is an homage to another's published work, it is usually performed informally rather than mass-marketed, thus avoiding copyright infringements. An example might be a song about Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek Enterprise set to the tune of "Jingle Bells," or a song about H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds meant to be performed to the tune of Handel's "Ode to Joy." Other filk songs might involve completely original music, and they might deal with technological or fantastic themes more generally rather than paying homage to a particular science fiction story. Likewise, a single filk song might make allusions to several different works simultaneously. The only prerequisite convention of the genre is that it be appealing to the people who frequent science fiction conventions and enjoy such literature and movies.

Filk is often written by amateur musicians or hobbyists. Fans traditionally perform the songs at science fiction conventions late at night after other scheduled events have ended. The filk movement first began in the 1950s, though it never became particularly widespread until the mid 1970s. The adjective/noun term filk comes from a typo--a misspelling of "folk music" in Lee Jacobs' essay, "The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Filk [sic] Music." The incorrect designation stuck and science fiction authors like Poul Anderson and Robert Asprin helped popularize the name through their friendly encouragement. Back formation or linguistic functional shift resulted in the verb to filk, which implies both "to sing or perform filk songs" and "to write songs about science fiction subjects." Various annual science conventions like the Ohio Valley Filk Festival (OVFF), the Nashville Musicon, and FilkOntario schedule regular filking events. Every year, OVFF offers a Pegasus award for excellence in Filk music.

FILIGREE WORK (also called vinework or vinery): A common type of decoration in medieval manuscripts. Scott defines it in the following manner: "Delicate, conventional designs, usually in gold, on a flat coloured surface, in overall patterns of curling vines, branches, and sprigs and/or leaves; used as a background to miniatures and initials and on band borders and miniature frames" (Scott 371).

FINNO-UGRIC: One of several language families outside the Indo-Euorpean family of languages. This family includes Hungarian, Estonian, Lappish, and Finnish.

FIRMAMENT (Septuagint Greek, stereoma "the beaten or hammered thing," Latin firmamentum, "the solid thing"): In Genesis, a mysterious substance described as "separating the lower waters from the upper waters" before the separation of dry land from the rest of the lower waters. In ancient cosmology, the firmament was thought to be a semi-translucent dome or vault of the sky. By medieval times, the theory arose that this firmament was the first of several translucent spheres encompassing the earth called the crystaline mobile. Extended discussion can be found here.

FIRST FOLIO: A set of Shakespeare's plays published in 1623. The "First Folio" included some thirty-six plays, and the editor of this publication took some care in the selection and accuracy of his texts, or at least more care than those editors who published earlier quartos. See folio and quarto below.

FIRST LANGUAGE: The preferred or normal language a speaker chooses to communicate in--i.e., one's native or fluent language. Bilingual individuals might have more than one.

FIRST SOUND SHIFT: In Grimm's Law, the systematic transformation of the Proto-Germanic Indo-European stop sounds.

FIT (possibly from Old Norse fit, "a hem," or German Fitze, "a skein of yarn or the thread used to mark off a day's work"): A fit is a numbered division of a a poem, much like a canto. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is divided into four fits, and Chaucer's "Sir Thopas" contains three fits. Lewis Caroll's The Hunting of the Snark consists of eight fits. The practice of dividing a narrative poem into fits has fallen into disuse in most modern poetry. Cf. canto.