Effeff (idiom)

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The expression “ to be able to or to know something inside out ” means to master a thing excellently or to be able to call up the corresponding knowledge very quickly, as in sleep, or to quickly understand the resulting connections.

Explanatory approaches

The origin of the phrase is unclear. The most common explanations for this idiom are:

  1. ff stands for "following pages": According to this explanation, anyone who can do something "inside out" (ff.) has mastered not only one aspect, but also all of the following "pages" of the topic.
  2. Merchants have been calling fine goods with f ( fino ) since the 17th century , and ff stands for very fine ( finissimo ). FF means something similar for food. So if you have mastered something inside out, you can do it very well .
  3. In the Middle Ages , the Digest / Pandekten (a collection of text excerpts from legal writings) were abbreviated by Roman lawyers with the symbol ff . This is possibly a corrupted π (Greek: pi) from pandectae . Another view is that it is a crossed D of Digesta . The digests, which consist of 50 books alone, represented a very extensive collection of the texts mentioned. Their classification criteria were also complex. Learning from them was difficult. For the beginner, Justinian had issued the so-called institutions in addition to the digests . They consisted of only four books of small size and had a very clear, but simpler classification system when accessed for the first time. Therefore the name. Because if someone knew something from the ff. , He knew it from the digests and not just from the institutions. So he was a professional, not a beginner.
  4. The term “inside out” comes from Latin, namely “ex forma, ex functione”. Somebody has mastered something inside out if he can not only describe it in terms of form, but also explain how it works.
  5. Furthermore, in music , ff stands for very loud ( fortissimo ), i.e. unmistakable, emphatic. Strongly in favor of this interpretation is the saying “They will fiddle with you from the inside out” (make something special).
  6. Abbreviation from the Italian city administration. The administration's examination of a citizen's petition ended with an F for fiat , Latin: let it be. If the magistrate also approved the request, another f was added, i.e. fiat fiat : That means: It will happen without further delay.

literature

  • Alfred Söllner : Introduction to Roman legal history. 4th edition. Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-34269-8 , p. 140.
  • Hermann Schmid: Lingua Latina 'ex efef' (e forma, e functione). Intensive course Latinum. Klett, Stuttgart 1993.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anna Belin: Idiomatic false friends in the German-Swedish vocabulary. 2008, accessed August 24, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander : Meaning of words and etymology: Effeff. Retrieved August 24, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Effeff. Retrieved August 24, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Knowledge makes you ah! - When do you master something inside out? In: www.wdr.de. Retrieved August 24, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Hermann Fitting : About the origin of the character ff for the digests. In: Journal of Legal History . Volume 12 (1876), p. 300
  6. ^ Adolf Stölzel : Again the abbreviation ff for the abbreviation D. Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Volume 13 (1878), p. 399 .
  7. ↑ ISBN 9783406475573 , quoted from Where does the expression “master something from the inside”? by Gabor Paal, SWR on July 7, 2011

Web links

Wiktionary: Effeff  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations