What does cedilla mean?
A cedilla is a small hook-shaped diacritical mark (¸) placed beneath a letter to modify its pronunciation. It appears most famously under the letter c in languages such as French, Portuguese, Catalan, and Turkish, where it signals that the letter should be pronounced softly — as an s sound rather than a k sound, as in French 'français' or 'garçon'. The name comes from the Spanish 'cedilla', meaning 'little z', because the mark originated as a diminutive form of the letter z used in medieval Iberian manuscripts. Although the symbol is common in European orthographies, English has borrowed only a handful of words containing it, so the term 'cedilla' itself is encountered mainly in contexts of language learning, linguistics, typography, and computing. Knowing the word is useful for anyone working with multilingual text or discussing how written symbols shape pronunciation across different alphabets.
nounA small hook-shaped mark (¸) placed beneath a letter — most commonly the letter c in French, Portuguese, and other languages — to indicate a change in its pronunciation, typically softening it.
- The hook-shaped diacritical mark (¸) written beneath a letter, especially c, to indicate a modified pronunciation.
"In the word 'garçon', the cedilla tells you to pronounce the c as an s rather than a k."
"French words like 'français' require a cedilla under the c to preserve the soft s sound before the vowel a."
"When typing on a Spanish keyboard, she had to remember the special key combination to produce the cedilla."
Regular plural formation by adding -s.
"The document contained several cedillas that had been lost during the encoding conversion."
The cedilla is actually a tiny Spanish 'z' that got squashed into a hook and slid under the letter c — its very name means 'little z'.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cedilla
The word 'cedilla' comes from Spanish, where it is the diminutive of 'zeda' or 'ceda', meaning the letter z — literally 'little z'. It entered English in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century via Spanish usage. The mark itself developed from medieval Spanish scribes' practice of writing a small z beneath a c to indicate a softened pronunciation, a convention later adopted into French and other European orthographies.
How cedilla is actually used
Primarily used in discussions of linguistics, typography, foreign-language learning, and writing systems; rare in everyday casual speech outside these contexts. The term is neutral in register.
Easily confused with cedilla
An umlaut (¨) is a pair of dots placed above a vowel to alter its sound, whereas a cedilla (¸) is a hook placed below a consonant, usually c.