nouna 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
Word origin
C16: from Spanish: little
z, from
ceda zed, from Late Latin
zeta; a small
z was originally written after
c in Spanish, to indicate a sibilant