Cedillas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A diacritical mark placed underneath a letter, typically used to indicate a change in pronunciation in various languages
2. A typographic symbol resembling a small hook or tail attached to certain letters, enhancing their phonetic representation
3. Utilized primarily in languages like Spanish and Portuguese to modify the sound of letters such as "c" and "s"

Etymology: The little hook under the letter C has a surprisingly Visigothic ancestry. In Spanish, "cedilla" meant "little zed," and it referred to the letter Ç itself. That letter grew out of a Visigothic form of Z, a shape called a Z with copete, which carried a small ornament above it. Over the centuries the ornament grew until it looked like a C, while the lower stroke of the old Z shrank into the tail we now recognise. The English word was borrowed from Spanish around 1600, and it kept the original meaning of the Spanish name. The mark is a fossil of a letter that had nearly vanished: a shrunken Z that readers eventually reinterpreted as a diacritic sitting beneath a C.

Synonyms: diacritics