cedilla

Noun

cedilla (plural cedillas or cedillae)

1. A diacritical mark ⟨¸⟩ placed beneath a letter to modify its pronunciation, used in the orthographies of many languages, such as under c in Catalan, French and Portuguese to indicate /s/ rather than /k/ (e.g. Catalan força, French menaçant, Portuguese almoço) and in other languages to modify the pronunciation of the letter c (e.g. from /d͡ʒ/ to /t͡ʃ/ in Turkish) or of other letters.
   • California, like several other states, prohibits the use of diacritical marks or accents on official documents. That means no tilde (~), no accent grave (`), no umlaut (¨) and certainly no cedilla (¸).2015 April 11, Tovin Lapan, “California birth certificates and accents: O’Connor alright, Ramón and José is not”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2025

   Synonyms:

   cedille, cédille

2. (broadly) Synonym of cauda
   • The scribal discipline indicated by this sort of consistency extends to such details as the employment of different forms of cedilla appended to the letter e to distinguish between diphthong ae and diphthong oe.1992, Margaret Gibson, T.A Heslop, Richard Pfaff, The Eadwine Psalter : text, image and monastic culture in twelfth-century Canterbury, Pennsylvania State University Press, page 15
   • Teresa Webber and Malcolm Parkes have both remarked on its use by the Canterbury scribe Eadmer in the twelfth century, who went so far as to distinguish cedillae indicating oe from cedillae indicating ae.2003, Carrie E. Beneš, “The Appearance and Spread of the E-Cedilla in Latin Bookhands”, in Manuscripta, volumes 43–44, page 2

   Synonyms:

   cauda