- a character ( ¸ ) placed underneath a c before a, o, or u, esp in French, Portuguese, or Catalan, denoting that it is to be pronounced (s), not (k). The same character is used in the scripts of other languages, as in Turkish under s
WordReference Random House Learner's Dictionary of American English © 2015
- Linguisticsa mark (ç) placed under a letter to indicate its pronunciation, as under c in French or Portuguese to indicate that it is pronounced (s) rather than (k), as in façade.
- Linguisticsa mark (
) placed under a consonant letter, as under c in French, in Portuguese, and formerly in Spanish, to indicate that it is pronounced (s), under c and s in Turkish to indicate that they are pronounced, respectively, (ch) and (sh), or under t and s in Romanian to indicate that they are pronounced, respectively, (ts) and (sh).
- Linguisticsthis mark used as a diacritic of arbitrary value in transliteration of words from non-Roman into Roman alphabetic characters.
- Spanish. variant spelling, spelled of zedilla little z, equivalent. to zed(a) zed + -illa diminutive suffix; the mark was so called from its original form