I know some of the Medieval letters are a bit unusual, but does anybody know what the symbol that looks like a cursive, lower-case Z is? I see it every now and then in Medieval Latin and am trying to remember. It is the reason why “videlicet” was shortened to “viz”… that’s all I can remember.
According to the OED:
“The z represents the ordinary med.L. symbol of contraction for et or -et.”
vidzt. was an alternate abbreviation.
Best,
Lisa
Hey, thanks.
I really don’t know what you mean with this ‘z’. Is there a cursive ‘z’ like that somewhere on the internet, so that I can see what you mean. Although I must have seen this before.
What stands OED for? Oxford E… Dictionnary?
Thanks,
Moerus
Sorry for this not so great picture, but it shows some of the symbol:
Look especially on the bottom left or wherever it says &ounce;
Hi,
OED= Oxford English Dictionary, the authority for things like usage and etymology. As you can see, the word itself need not be English, just used in English.
A similar “z” may be found here:
http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/F/NTRQ/F_NTRQ-10005000.jhtml
in the fourth row, third letter after the title: it is the lowercase “z” for this particular font.
Best,
Lisa
O now I see, thank you for the clarifications.
This is an orthographic variant of ‘&’.
& is called the tironic sign, cause it is invented by tiro, the secretary of Cicero. Tiro had to use a stenographic systeme to write things really fast. So he used soms ligatures. A ligature may be seen as a combination of two letters but written together, one letter in an other. Anyway they have soms lines in commun. & in fact is an ‘e’ with a ‘t’, but the ‘t’ is written upside down and is attached to the ‘e’. So this tironic sign was used in Latin for the word ‘et’ but also for the lettercombination ‘-et-’ as in val& for valet, etc. Later this sign is used in other languages for ‘and, und, en, et, e, … (the words for ‘et’ in each language)’. In English, Dutch, … this sign is also called an ‘ampersand’. This is because the English used to end their alphabet with ‘x y z and per se ent (and)’. So this ‘and per se ent’ became ampersand / ampersant.
& is only one form for writing this. In other writings it has an orthographical variant that looks like a ‘z’.
If you want to figure out abbreviations in manuscripts, their is a little book for that:
Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane, by Adriano Capelli.
This book gives 531 pages of abbreviations in Latin and Italian manuscripts and their sollutions.
Greetz,
Moerus (in a paleographical mood)
Ha. That makes a lot of sense. Nice explanation. 