XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: HenHanna@devnull.tb   
      
   On 6/15/2024 4:22 PM, Ross Clark wrote:   
   > And the linguistic angle is...   
   > "The original is written in medieval Latin, as was normal for official   
   > documents at the time..."   
   > And this goes on to scribal abbreviations, which were also normal at the   
   > time:   
   >   
   > "...in Magna Carta _and_* was written as a dash with a small tail, _per_   
   > ('of') could appear as a letter 
 with a crossbar on the descender,   
   > and _nostra_ ('our') was written  with a horizontal line above."   
   >   
   > *He should really have written: _et_ ('and').   
   >   
   > (Something that came up quite recently in the excerpt from the Chronicle   
   > about the Danes sacking Lindisfarne):   
   >   
   > "A symbol that looked like the numeral 7 was very frequent in   
   > Anglo-Saxon texts as a replacement for _and_: it derives from the symbol   
   > used in classical Latin for _et_ ('and') by Cicero's scribe, Marcus   
   > Tullius Tiro (and thus often called the 'Tironian _et_')."   
   > As Aidan knew.   
      
      
      
      
   Old Irish   
      
   Etymology= Abbreviation of Latin et reliqua (“and the rest”), with et   
   being contracted via the Tironian note ⁊.   
      
      
   Phrase   
      
   ⁊rl.   
      
      
   ocus -->  agus   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)