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Et cetera (in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 contexts pronounced ) is a Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 expression that means "and other things," or "and so forth." It is taken directly from the Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 expression which literally means "and the rest (of such things)" and is a transliteration of the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 "?a? ?te?a" (kai hetera; and the others).






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Et cetera (in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 contexts pronounced ) is a Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 expression that means "and other things," or "and so forth." It is taken directly from the Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 expression which literally means "and the rest (of such things)" and is a transliteration of the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 "?a? ?te?a" (kai hetera; and the others). Et means "and;" cetera (plural of ceterum/caeterum) means "the rest."

The one-word spelling "etcetera" is commonly used, and is accepted as correct by many dictionaries. It is also sometimes spelled et caetera or et cætera, and is often abbreviated to etc.. Archaic abbreviations, most commonly used in legislation, notations for mathematics or qualifications, include &/c., &c., and &ca..

The phrase et cetera is often used to represent the logical continuation of some sort of series of descriptions. For example, in the following expression...

We will need a lot of bread: wheat, white, etc.


... the 'etc.' stands for 'and other types of bread'. It is an error to say or write "and etc." in which the word "and" would be redundant. This would translate as "and and the rest".

Typically, the abbreviated versions should always be followed by a full stop
Full stop

A full stop or period , is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of Sentence s in English language and many other languages....
 (period), and it is customary—even in British English
British English

British English or UK English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere....
 where the serial comma
Serial comma

The serial comma is the comma used immediately before a grammatical conjunction that precedes the last item in a list of three or more items....
 is typically not used—that "etc." always be preceded by a comma. Thus:

A, B, C, etc.


not:

A, B, C etc


It should be noted however that some publishing house styles (particularly in Britain) no longer require either the preceding comma or the following stop. In general, writers are advised to use the traditional style unless circumstances dictate otherwise.

In some situations, an ellipsis
Ellipsis

Ellipsis in printing and writing refers to a mark or series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text....
 ("…") can be a substitute for ", et cetera." when it is used at the end of a sentence, as in:

We need a lot of fruit: apples, bananas, oranges…


or

We need a lot of fruit: apples, bananas, oranges… etc.


In lists of persons, et al. is used in place of etc. (an abbreviation of et alii, meaning "and others"). Less common is the use of et al. in lists of places (where it abbreviates et alibi, meaning "and elsewhere".)

A common misspelling of the abbreviation is "ect." (although it is worth checking if the writer is making a humorous allusion to Nigel Molesworth
Nigel Molesworth

Nigel Molesworth is the supposed author of a series of books , with cartoon illustrations by Ronald Searle.The Molesworth books were the result of an approach by Willans to the cartoonist, Searle, to illustrate a series of books based on a column he had been writing for the humorous magazine Punch ....
); a common mispronunciation
Mispronunciation

Mispronunciation is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "incorrect or inaccurate pronunciation". The matter of what is or is not mispronunciation is a contentious one, and indeed there is some disagreement about the extent to which the term is even meaningful....
 is "ex cetera," and another common misspelling is "et cetra."

Usage by monarchs

Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
an monarchs, who sometimes have lengthy titles due to dynastic claims to territories accumulated over the centuries (and also as a matter of prestige), often shorten their full titles by concluding it with "et cetera"; even then the phrase would often be repeated in order to emphasize the monarchs' grandeur.

A prime example of this usage would be from Tsar
Tsar

Tsar or czar , occasionally spelled csar or tzar in English language, is a slavs term designating certain monarchs.Originally, the title Czar meant Emperor in the European medieval sense of the term, that is, a ruler who has the same rank as a Ancient Rome or Byzantine emperor due to recognition by another emperor or...
 Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II of Russia

Nicholas II was the last Tsar of Russian Empire, Grand Prince of Finland, and claimant to the title of King of Poland. His official title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is currently regarded as Saint Nicholas the Passion Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church....
, who traditionally began his proclamation
Proclamation

A proclamation is an official declaration....
s with his shortened (but still long) title: "We
Pluralis majestatis

The majestic plural is the use of a plural pronoun to refer to a single person holding a high office, such as a monarch, bishop, pope, or university rector....
, Nicholas II, By the Grace of God
By the Grace of God

By the Grace of God, as well as the various equivalent phrases in other languages thus rendered in English language,is not a title in its own right, but a common introductory part of the full styles of many Monarchs, preceding the actual princely styles in chief of the specific realm and/or other principalities ....
, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera".

In the 1956
1956 in film

The year 1956 in film involved some significant events....
 film The King and I, Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner

Yul Brynner was a Russian-born actor of stage and screen, perhaps best known for his portrayal of the Thailandese king in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical The King and I on both stage and screen, as well as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B....
, who played King Mongkut of Siam, famously used the phrase "et cetera, et cetera, et cetera" on numerous occasions. Whether this was inspired by the use of "et cetera" in European monarchs titles, however, is not quite clear.

See also

  • List of Latin phrases
    List of Latin phrases

    This page lists direct English language translations of common Latin phrases, such as veni, vidi, vici and et cetera. Some of the phrases are themselves translations of List of Greek phrases, as Greek language rhetoric and literature were highly regarded in ancient Rome when Latin rhetoric and literature were still maturing....
  • Ellipses
    Ellipsis

    Ellipsis in printing and writing refers to a mark or series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text....
     (…) may be used for a similar function.
  • Inter caetera
    Inter caetera

    Inter caetera was a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on 4 May 1493, which granted to Spain all lands to the "west and south" of a pole-to-pole line 100 League s west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands....
     ("Among other [works]"), a papal bull
    Papal bull

    A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a pope. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end to authenticate it....
    .