Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is lesson 184 . Part 1 , actually today
we're going to have a part one and a part two. The title of today's lesson i's common everyday
abbreviations uses and meanings. Yeah these are abbreviations we see very often in
English in written English and not everybody knows what all of them
actually stand for. So I'm just going review them maybe you do know most of
these or maybe you know half of them but anyway let's cover it. So let's look at the
first one. AD, I'm sure everybody's familiar with it and if you ask the
average person what does it stand for actually in the States when I heard if
ask the average person what it stands for most people usually say after death.
Because AD and BC goes together most people know BC stands for before
Christ after death is actually not correct. A lot of these abbreviations
actually do come from Latin. So AD actually stands for Anno Domini
in Latin and in Latin it means year of God which to be honest that makes
more sense. Because I remember growing up thinking well AD shouldn't really be
right because if AD meant after death then it should really be beginning
around 30-something AD so it actually makes sense so AD means year of God
meaning the year that God or Jesus is supposed to be born. So that's what AD
actually stands for. All right and let's give an example.
Remember eg we're going to be covering eg, eg actually stands for example. The
colonies declared independence from Britain in 1776 AD. Let's look at the next
one. BC of course BC and AD goes together so
BC is before the Year Zero. Of course it does originally stand for before Christ and that's one of the
reasons why some people thought AD might actually stand for after death. They
didn't realise that it comes from Latin. Okay so let's look at the first example
here. Alexander the Great died in 323 BC. So you know like minus 323 BC. All right good. Now here's a couple of other ones also
related to AD and BC. The first one is BCE. All right , what does BCE stand for ?It stands
for before Common Era . Actually BC just means BCE means exactly the
same thing as BC, but here's a note here it's used mostly by some non-Christians.
Yeah I remember the first time I came across it. I thought to myself you know
when I realized what it stood for well why do you need BCE and CE e when you
already have AD and BC and I kind of suspected it might have been for this
reason. So to be honest I don't see it a lot. I see it in probably less than 1% of
all articles and stuff that's written out there so it's still not really
really common. The only thing that you should note is you should focus on what
it means BCE actually is the same as BC CE is the same thing as AD but i would
probably avoid using it a bit. It's I guess there is a chance that some
Christians actually might be a little offended because it seems like you're
going way out of your way to not want to use you know the meaning of Christ or AD.
A little bit like the X sometimes in Xmas. sometimes you know that some
Christians don't really like you know if they had a Christmas card that's an Xmas
for the same sort of reason. This might be a little worse
because it seems like you're
going much more out of your way. Your whole life
when you were growing up and throughout the world everybody knows BC and AD
that's been standard for a long long time. It doesn't matter what your
religion is everybody uses BC and AD to refer to that time period. Okay let's go
on. Let's go to the next one, am. , am you know time. We see this all the time.
Everybody knows am everybody knows how to use am you know . Definitely all
native speakers do. This one also comes from Latin but in Latin it stands for
ante meridian. And that directly translated to English.
That means before midday so before 12:00 I guess before 12 pm. so that's means ante
meridiem. This is another one that even though most native speakers know it and
know how to use it if you ask the average American on the street
what does am stand for I don't think most would be able to say ante meridiem.
I think definitely less than 50% I wouldn't be surprised if it was about
eighty or ninety percent did not know this. But anyway it's just good to note
it. Let's see an example with it. He wakes up at 7:00 a.m. every morning . Yeah of
course we use it all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if you ask some you know
average person on the street what does a.m. stand for let's say it
stands for something?
it's the time it's a.m. it's always a.m. you might get
a response like that. I wouldn't be surprised. All right let's look at the
next one, p.m. yeah it's the opposite p.m. actually stands for post meridiem.
So after midday. Okay good . Yeah so just the total opposite, So of course after 12:00.
You know after 12:00 pm. Yeah the afternoon. So here's the example. She gets off work
at 5:00 p.m. every day. Most people should know this. All right let's look at the next one CV. CV is mostly British use.
It literally stands for curriculum vitae. It is also from Latin, Again like I said British use.
Literally translated back to English it means the course of life. In
American English we tend to use the French word we use resume. So of course
if you're going for a job you might need your you're British you need your CV if
you're American you to use your resume. You know if somebody said you have your
resume. So of course you know that's the listing of all the previous jobs you had
your education. Any other skills or talents you have and so on . Okay good, ca is
the next one here. A lot of times you see CA actually written as circa but you
might see the abbreviation sometimes. It means around or about and it's mostly
used with dates. So used to show dates are close but not exact. Yeah so they
don't really know the exact dates. But they're kind of guessing and it's their
best guess of around the time it is. So a lot of times if you do see circa or CA
It's often used a round number like they'll say you know 500 BC they don't say 502
you know CA with 502 that much or circa 502 to a more likely to say 500 or 490.
They're more likely to give it a round number. Like on the tens or something.
Okay good. Here's an example they believed he died circa 300 BC. Good All right.
ironically we have the abbreviation for for example this one sometimes confuses
someone because the eg. doesn't look like it should stand for for example.
I've sometimes seen some native speakers actually write ex and to be honest
with you , logically from a Western point of view I wouldn't be surprised a lot of
people think it should be ex. For example but uh but it's not it's eg, eg is for
example. Okay so eg means for example. It comes this one also comes directly from
Latin. So this is the reason we use eg because it stands for exempli gratia.
That's so that's the eg, so the eg, comes from that. Comes from the Latin. All right so
and you know, translated from the Latin it means for the sake of an example. But
usually we just say for example. Okay good I have an eg for eg. So an example
for for example several presidents of the US were assassinated , the eg is
you know for example Lincoln , JFK etc. Okay and I'm using the same example here
as for the last one. Because we have both eg and etc in the same sentence.
etc. we see it all the time. This is one of those ones that you
cannot pronounce as etc you have to say the
full word etc. Although you rarely see the full word written out. Sometimes I've
seen some people write the full word out as a single word, but technically it
really should be two words from Latin, et in Latin means and, And cetera means the
rest. So that's why it's always used after a series you mentioned like one
two three things and then you might say et cetera, meaning you could name a lot more,
but you don't want to bore the person or the reader by naming all of them,. So
basically it means and the rest or , and so on.
Okay I hope you got it. I hope it was informative. And I guess I look forward
to part two. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.