[a. Sp. cedilla = It. zediglia, on L. type *zēticula, dim. of zēta the letter; see quot. 1878.] A mark (¸) derived from the letter z, written, especially in French and Portuguese (formerly also in Spanish) words, under c, to show that it has the ‘soft’ sound of the letter in positions in which the ‘hard’ sound would be normal, as before a, o, u. An earlier form was CERILLA.
Chambers, 1753, takes cedilla as the letter c with the subscript mark; printers still sometimes use it in this sense.
1599. Minsheu, Span. Gram., 6. Marked with a dash vnder it thus, ç, called ç Cerilla, or ç Cedilla, is proper to the Arabique tongue, from whence it was first taken.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Cedilla … denotes a sort of small c, to the bottom of which is affixed a kind of virgula, as ç.… The cedilla is called by some of our printers a ceceril.
1878. Kitchin, trans. Brachet’s Fr. Dict., s.v., The cedilla was a z, placed first by the side of, afterwards underneath the letter affected.
