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Chris -- 2025-05-10
I actually have encountered this mostly as “and all,” e.g. in the intro to an email, “Dear Howard and all…” But a quick search of Google books finds it fairly often as “et all,” and the Google Ngram Viewer shows its use to be on the rise (but also, interestingly, that it’s been used at least since 1800): http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?cont … moothing=3
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Welcome to the forum, cs. Agreed, a post on et all is long overdue. It’s been mentioned a couple of times in passing but never discussed as it should be. (To find the hidden mentions, you must go to the “Eggcorn Database” above, and enter “et all” in quotes in the Google search box). The last I checked, et all had more than 700000 raw ghits; your more sophisticated analysis excited my interest.
There is confusion on the web about what et al. stands for. The Online ED says
1883, abbrev. of L. et alii (masc.), et aliæ (fem.), or et alia (neut.), in any case meaning “and others.”
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=et+al.
All is Church of England.
O.E. eall “all, every, entire,” from P.Gmc. *alnaz (cf. O.Fris., O.H.G. al, O.N. allr, Goth. alls), with no certain connection outside Gmc.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=all
Here’s a learned folk etymology from a way back.
Dr. W. W. ALLISON (Chesterfield) writes
Dr. A. J. Jex-Blake (December 6, p. 1259) is perfectly correct in his condemnation of ” etcc.,” which was obviously used facetiously. His advocacy, however, of “et all.” is not so happy. “Et all.” is clearly intended to represent ” et alii.” To give the term in full would only involve the substitution of two vowels for a consonant and a full stop. I do not think the printer would have reason to complain on the score of brevity or of increased labour. Finally, ” et al.,” though frequently used for ” et alius ” or ” et alii,” is not strictly correct in this sense; ” et al.” really stands for ” et alibi,” meaning ” and elsewhere.”
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