F-Zero (also written F0) is an abbreviation for "fundamental frequency." The fundamental frequency of a wave is what we perceive aurally as its pitch. For any given complex wave, it is possible to use Fourier analysis to describe the wave as the sum of a number of simple (sine or cosine) waves, each of which has a frequency that is a whole-number multiple of the fundamental. Each of these component waves is a harmonic.


F-Zero is also the name of the house band of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. They play mostly folk music from a variety of cultures (Celtic, English, klezmer, Québécois, Ukrainian, Bengali (specifically Rabindranath Tagore), Maori, etc.). Since the members of the band include both phonologists and syntacticians, we may speculate that the name F-Zero is deliberately ambiguous between F0 (fundamental frequency) and F0 (minimal Focus projection).