[si-dil-uh] 
| 1. | a 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). |
| 2. | this mark used as a diacritic of arbitrary value in transliteration of words from non-Roman into Roman alphabetic characters. |
| ce·dil·la (sĭ-dĭl'ə) n. A mark ( ¸ ) placed beneath the letter c, as in the spelling of the French word garçon, to indicate that the letter is to be pronounced (s). [Obsolete Spanish, diminutive of ceda, the letter z (so called because a small z was formerly written after a c, and later below it, to indicate that the normal hard c was to be pronounced as a sibilant, like s or z), from Late Latin zēta, zeta, from Greek; see zeta.] |