Why do we use ‘no.’ for ‘number’ when there’s no ‘o ’ in it |
Perhaps you have previously wondered why ‘number’ is abbreviated as ‘no.’ even though it contains ‘o. This phenomenon has nothing to do with poor spelling; rather, it is a legacy from Latin: the base form of numerus is ‘numero’ (from which no. is derived), which is an ablative case meaning, ‘by the number.’ The use…