&c.

[kev67]

I sometimes see '&c.' in old books, where today we would probably write 'etc.'. Does anyone know what '&.c' is short for and how it is pronounced?

[Lokasenna]

It's pronounced the same. The ampersand is a ligature of 'et', meaning of course 'and'.

Given that 'et cetera' simply means 'and others', using '&c.' is simply a way of further shortening the shorthand.

Perhaps I'm a mad, archaic old soul, but I still use '&c.' in my writing...

[bounty]

im going out on a small limb here because foreign languages aren't my strong suit, but do I find them interesting...so it was as I recognized that the latin et cetera seems to have been taken wholly into the French as et cetera. I wonder if other languages are the same?

[kiki1982]

The Online Etymology Dictionaryterm=et%20cetera&allowed_in_frame=0 (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=et%20cetera&allowed_in_frame=0) says the common abbreviation before the 20th century was &c. and only later came etc. Hence why you see it a lot in old books. :)

I think the older abbreviation is more logical because the original Latin was two words, and as the ampersand (&) was first used in the first century AD as a ligature (symbol for two letters) for 'et' (and in Latin), it stands to reason that &c. would have been the first abbreviation.

And yes, French and Dutch also have 'etcetera'. I'd be confident that most Romance languages have it, but I'm not sure about the Slavic and Germanic ones. German has it, but they prefer to use the German equivalent (und so weiter), while Dutch prefers 'enzovoort' (literally the English and German Germanic equivalents) over 'etcetera', though it's about a 50/50 split (a translated text would prefer enzovoort, but if a native speaker wrote it, it wouldn't be an issue). The German aversion for foreign words is much stronger than the Dutch in this case. However the English, conversely, I think, prefer to use 'etcetera' over their Germanic equivalent 'and so forth'.
I firstly thought it had to do with part of Germany not being occupied by the Romans, but that doesn't apply to Dutch.

Looking on Google, it turns out that etc. in the Slavic languages (including south Slavic Croatian), is something along the lines of the Russian 'i tak dalee'. So no luck there, as I thought. Though some do have a mind of their own in some areas, they usually take their stuff from the Russian mother language, with some linguistic variation. I'm sure they don't like hearing that ;).

Norwegian and Danish both seem to prefer 'och sa videre' and its variation (literally 'and so forth/on'), though Swedish seems to have a 50/50 split too with 'etc.'. Why that is, I have no idea, though they may not be so protective of their language as their Scandinavian brothers...

[Eiseabhal]

'S eile / mar sin air adhart / 7ri Three variations from Gaelic. The last is a written form. The second is the "formal" spoken version. The first is very colloquial.

[ennison]

7ri? Do you mean sri? I can see where that would come from.

[Eiseabhal]

It means "sri" but I'm sure I've seen it written as "7ri" On the other hand I could be havering!