Why do we use so many Latin abbreviations in English? These abbreviations didn’t begin as English, but were abbreviations used in Latin writing to save time. They gradually took on meanings of their own and entered the English language. Today, a lot of people (myself included) don’t know what the original Latin expression was or actually means. Let’s break this topic into two parts. Let’s look at some examples of abbreviations and what they mean, and then let’s look at why they became fixed in English.
There are many examples we could choose from. Let’s have a look at QED, a.m., p.m., PhD, MA, BA, RIP, etc., e.g., i.e., PS, AD, C., CV, et al., and re..
QED is quod erat demonstrandum and means “that which was to be demonstrated”. It is used after mathematical proofs, but these days it is often used to show that something has been proven.
A.m. and p.m. stand for ante meridiem and post meridiem. Meridiem means (medius) middle of the (dies) day, or noon. Ante means before and post means after. The Romans divided their day into halves on either side of noon and they started to abbreviate it to a.m. and p.m.
PhD, MA, and BA are all degrees you can earn from a university. PhD is Philosophiae Doctor (Doctor of Philosophy), MA is Magister Artium (Master of Arts), and BA (originally AB) is Artium Baccalaureus (Bachelor of Arts).
People think RIP stands for Rest In Peace, but it actually comes from the Latin requiescat in pace, which means the same thing, rather conveniently. It was first used on Christian gravestones in the 8th century because the Latin phrase was too long.
Etc. is the shortened form of et cetera, which means and the other things. It was sometimes written as &c. because & came from the cursive form of et.
E.g. is exempli gratia and i.e. is id est. It can be difficult to tell them apart but e.g. means example given and i.e. means that is, or in other words. You use e.g. when you are giving examples of something and i.e. when you are clarifying or defining something.
PS comes from post scriptum, which means after the writing. AD is Anno Domini, which means in the year of our lord. That was first used in the 6th century by a monk called Dionysius Exiguus. C. comes from circa, meaning about for a date. CV is curriculum vitae, which means course of life. Et al. comes from et alia, et alii, et aliae, depending on gender or number, and means and others. Re., as in what you sometimes use when you are writing the subject of an email, comes from in re, which means in the matter of.
So, why do we use these abbreviations? Well, as they are Latin expressions, we have to start with the Romans. Latin was the language of Rome and the language of government, law, education and almost everything official across the whole Roman Empire. When people wrote they naturally abbreviated sentences that they had to write often. They used these abbreviations in inscriptions, legal writing, and it became a huge system. When people wrote on parchment, they used all of the abbreviations they could to save parchment, ink, and time. After the western Roman Empire fell, this tradition carried on. Latin was still the working language of educated people across Europe in law, government, religion, medicine, official records, and many more. People still had to write by hand and parchment and ink were still expensive, so they carried on writing with abbreviations. By early medieval times, there were so many abbreviations and contractions that there were even guides available to explain them all.
As English slowly grew and eroded the hold of Latin, many words fell by the wayside, but the abbreviations stayed. They were easy to write, and people knew what they meant. Then the printing press was invented and a lot of these abbreviations were set into the language. Just as with parchment and ink, they saved space. As more time passed, they entered the English language. People knew what they meant and knew how to use them, but a lot of people didn’t remember the Latin they were abbreviating. Sometimes the abbreviation even took on English words, as with Rest In Peace.
These abbreviations stay in our language, like fossils of Latin left behind. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postscript?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/AD/309640?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_abbreviations
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