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"i.e." abbreviates "id est", which transliterates from Latin to "that is"; "e.g.", "exempli gratia", "for (the sake of) example". Most other such abbreviations
by throwanem 6y ago
"i.e." abbreviates "id est", which transliterates from Latin to "that is"; "e.g.", "exempli gratia", "for (the sake of) example". Most other such abbreviations found in English originate and function similarly, such as "cf." ("conferatur", "compare"), "nb." ("nota bene", "note well"), "etc." ("et cetera", "and so on"), etc.
- dan-robertson 6y agoMost people don’t know enough Latin for such translations to help with writing sentences that conform to standard grammar.
- throwanem 6y agoTrue, but looking up abbreviations like these seems often to lead first to the Latin expansion, and figuring out what that means in English provides the necessary grammatical clue. Also, I'm enough of a linguistics nerd to like the way abbreviations like these work for their own sake, so I thought I'd share in case anyone else might be interested too.