“ In German, however, V is used with the same value as F, while W takes the value that V has in English. Apart from some southern dialect forms which have found their way into the literary language, as vat (for fat or wine-fat which still survives in the English Bible) and vixen the feminine of fox, all the words in English which begin with V are of foreign, and most of Latin origin. In the middle of words between vowels f was originally regularly voiced: life, lives ”

“ The history of V as the Latin numeral for 5 is uncertain. An old theory is that it represents the hand, while X=10 is the two hands with the finger tips touching. This was adopted by Mommsen (Hermes, xxii. 598) . ”