Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
"ALF" is a name that signifies or is derived from: "an elf counsel". |
Date "ALF" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1888. (references) |
"ALF" is a common misspelling or typo for: alb, ale, all, calf, elf, half. |
| Domain | Definition |
Computing | ALF Algebraic Logic Functional language. Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A.L.F. is the name of a popular TV sitcom series produced by NBC between 1986 and 1990, inspired by and spoofing the movie E.T (1982).
Michu Meszaros was the actor within the Alf costume. Paul Fusco operated the Alf puppet, supplied Alf's voice and co-produced the series.
The title character is Gordon Shumway, a little alien nick-named A.L.F. (Alien Life Form). He was born 229 years ago on the Lower East side of the planet Melmac. The planet Melmac was located six parsecs past the Hydra Centauras Super Cluster and had a green sky and blue grass.
Alf's body is covered with orange fur. He has a rippled snout, eight stomachs and likes to eat cats. He attended high school for 122 years and was captain of a Bouillabaiseball team (which is played on ice using shellfish as a ball).
Following a ham radio signal, he crash-landed into the garage of the Tanners, a suburbian middle-class family including the social worker Willie (Max Wright), his wife Kate (Anne Schedeen), their children Lynn (Andrea Elson), Brian (Benji Gregory) and Lucky (a cat).
Unsure what to do, the Tanners take ALF into their home and hide him from NASA, the Military, and their nosy neighbors until he can repair his spacecraft. It became known that Melmac had exploded, so ALF was without a home. He became a permanent member of the family even though his smart alec attitude and frequent mischief-making causes difficulty for the Tanners.
Two spinoff animated series arose. The first, set on ALF's home planet of Melmac, ran on Saturday daytime in 1988. A later second series, AlfTales, ran alongside the older cartoon and eventually outlived it. AlfTales took Gordon and his familiar cohorts on Melmac and placed them as characters in classic (Earthly) fairy tales.
In 1996 a 90 minutes TV-movie named Project: ALF was aired on ABC.
At the time that the original TV series was popular, some ALF-related merchandise was sold, including a 1988 calendar with Melmac's planetary holidays (such as Shout at a Shrub Day) prominently marked.
Recently, ALF has been appearing in one of the numerous long-distance dialing plan commercials on American television. Alf has made many appearances on Hollywood Squares, including the current version.
ALF is an acronym standing for the animal rights group the Animal Liberation Front.
ALF is an acronym standing for Alien Life Form.
ALF was the name of an American television sitcom, see Alf.Cast
Spinoffs
External links
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Alf."
| The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted. | |||
| Entry | Source | Expression | Field |
ALF | English | Automatic Line Feed | N/A |
ALF | German | Langwellenkorrektursignal | Geography, Post & Telecom |
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |||
Synonym: ALFSynonym: Extraterrestrial life. (additional references) |
Crosswords: ALF |
| Specialty definitions using "ALF": abstract machine, Algebraic Logic Functional language ♦ Corbeaux ♦ TLAs. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "ALF": Elf. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "ALF" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Frisian (eleven), Swedish (elf, pixie). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Alf wouldn't eat lucky, would he? (ALF; writing credit: Alberto Fischerman; Rodolfo Rabanal) | |
Movie/TV Titles | The Alf Garnett Saga (1972) Bill and Fred Alf (1964) Alf laila wa leila (1941) Meet alf guinea (1936) The Thoughts of Chairman Alf (1998) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "ALF" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 84.53% of the time. "ALF" is used about 181 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (proper) | 84.53% | 153 | 25,427 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 7.73% | 14 | 93,893 |
| Noun (singular) | 6.63% | 12 | 101,599 |
| Unclassified Items | 0.55% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Noun (common) | 0.55% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 181 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following table summarizes the usage of "ALF" based on a population census conducted in the United States. Ranks and frequencies are based on all names reported and classified. |
| Name | Usage/Gender | Usage per 100 million Persons | Rank in USA |
| Alf | Last name | 130 | 58,806 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits. | |||
| "ALF" is a name that signifies or is derived from: "an elf counsel". | |||
| The following table summarizes names related to "ALF." | |||
| Name | Gender | Language | Related Name |
| Alf | Male | English | Alfred |
| Alfred | Male | English | N/A |
| Alfreda | Female | English | Alfred |
| Avery | Male, Female | English | Alfred |
| Alfred | Male | French | N/A |
| Alfreda | Female | German | Alfred |
| Alfréd | Male | Hungarian | Alfred |
| Alfreda | Female | Italian | Alfred |
| Alfredo | Male | Italian | Alfred |
| Alfreda | Female | Polish | Alfred |
| Alfredo | Male | Portuguese | Alfred |
| Alfredo | Male | Spanish | Alfred |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
alf | 640 | alf project | 7 |
alf poier | 42 | alf t shirt | 6 |
alf tv show | 39 | alf clothing | 6 |
alf picture | 36 | alf com | 6 |
alf furniture | 18 | alf merchandise | 5 |
alf dvd | 16 | alf movie | 5 |
alf garnett | 15 | alf episode | 5 |
alf prøysen | 10 | alf alien | 5 |
alf doll | 10 | alf toy | 5 |
alf pic | 9 | alf tupper | 5 |
alf cast | 8 | alf ross | 4 |
alf video | 8 | alf lyrics poier | 4 |
alf enterprise | 8 | alf tale | 4 |
alf buddy icon | 8 | alf garnet | 4 |
alf tv | 8 | alf stuffed animal | 4 |
alf cartoon | 7 | alf clip video | 4 |
alf proysen | 7 | alf golf | 4 |
alf wallpaper | 7 | alf coloring page | 4 |
alf svensson | 7 | alf group | 4 |
alf landon | 7 | alf series tv | 4 |
alf shark | 4 | ||
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "ALF": alfa, alfaki, alfakis, alfalfa, alfalfas, alfaqui, alfaquin, alfaquins, alfaquis, alfas, alfilaria, alfilarias, alforja, alforjas, alfresco. (additional references) | |
Words ending with "ALF": behalf, calf, half, mooncalf. (additional references) | |
Words containing "ALF": calflike, calfs, calfskin, calfskins, coalfield, coalfields, coalfish, coalfishes, dealfish, dealfishes, halfback, halfbacks, halfbeak, halfbeaks, halfhearted, halfheartedly, halfheartedness, halfheartednesses, halflife, halflives, halfness, halfnesses, halfpence, halfpennies, halfpenny, halftime, halftimes, halftone, halftones, halfway, malfeasance, malfeasances, malfed, malformation, malformations, malformed, malfunction, malfunctioned, malfunctioning, malfunctions, palfrey, palfreys, pedalfer, pedalfers, severalfold. (additional references) | |
| |
"ALF" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Abf, Aefg, Ahf, Akfm, Alfi, Alfwy, Alfy, Alif, Allc, aulf, Falf, Ilf, Ilfc, Oalf. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-f-l" | |
-1 letter: al, fa, la. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-f-l" | |
+1 letter: alef, alfa, alif, calf, fail, fall, falx, farl, feal, fila, flab, flag, flak, flam, flan, flap, flat, flaw, flax, flay, flea, foal, half, leaf, loaf. | |
+2 letters: afoul, alefs, alfas, alifs, aloft, aloof, awful, calfs, calif, fable, fails, falls, false, farle, farls, fatal, fatly, fauld, fault, fecal, fella, feral, fetal, filar, final, flabs, flack, flags, flail, flair, flake, flaky, flame, flams, flamy, flank, flans, flaps, flare, flash, flask, flats, flaws, flawy, flaxy, flays, fleam, fleas, float, flora, flota, foals, focal, folia, frail, fugal, kalif, leafs, leafy, loafs, loofa, luffa, offal, pilaf, sulfa. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)41 4C 46 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references).- .-.. ..-. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000001 01001100 01000110 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)A L F |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0041 004C 0046 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)354640 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Usage Frequency 7. Names: Frequency 8. Names: Derived from | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Abbreviations 11. Acronyms 12. Derivations | 13. Anagrams 14. Orthography 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
