et
et Lexical Profile
et Game Scores & Validity
• conjunction
And (used in English exclusively within borrowed Latin phrases and academic abbreviations such as 'et al.', 'et cetera', and 'et seq.').
"The Latin word 'et' forms the ligature known as the ampersand and appears in common scholarly abbreviations like 'et al.'"
• noun
An extraterrestrial; a hypothetical intelligent being originating from a planet or world outside Earth (usually capitalized as 'ET').
"Science fiction films of the late twentieth century popularized the image of the friendly ET visiting suburban neighborhoods."
• verb
British To have consumed food; a dialectal or nonstandard past tense and past participle of 'eat'.
"In the old country ballad, the hungry traveler et every crumb of bread left on the tavern table."
Word Nuance & Usage
In standard English, 'et' is almost exclusively encountered inside fixed Latin borrowings such as 'et al.' and 'et cetera', whereas its use as a verb form of 'eat' is strictly regional or nonstandard.
• Rhymes for et
Word Origin & Etymology
As a conjunction, borrowed from Latin et ('and'), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eti ('beyond, further'). As a dialectal verb form, a phonetic representation of the traditional British and archaic pronunciation of 'ate', the past tense of Old English etan ('to eat').