Et cetera

Helping orphans the way you would do it

Et cetera, often abbreviated to etc. (sometimes in older texts as &/c or &c.), is Latin for "and the others". It is often used to represent the logical continuation of some sort of series of descriptions. For example:

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

Note that in formal contexts, it is preferable to write the full phrase et cetera as opposed to the abbreviation (etc). The English equivalents and so on and and so forth are also suitable.

When dealing with lists of persons, it is considered extremely inappropriate and insulting to use et cetera instead of et al (which stands for et alii) or and others.

See List of Latin phrases for other common Latin phrases.

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