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• c
  c

  abbreviation

  (with a year) about.
• C
  C

  noun

  the third letter of the English alphabet, a consonant.
• c̄
  c̄

  (in prescriptions) with.
• C-
  C-

  (in designations of transport aircraft) cargo.
• c.
  c.

  abbreviation

  gallon.
• C.
  C.

  abbreviation

  Calorie.
• c/-
  c/-

  abbreviation

  care of

c

¹ American  

Or c.

abbreviation

1. (with a year) about.

   c1775.

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c ² American  

Or c.

abbreviation

1. Optics. candle; candles.

2. cycle; cycles.

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c ³ American  

Symbol.

1. Physics, Optics. the speed of light in a vacuum: standardized as 186,282.4 miles per second (299,792,458 meters per second).

2. Physics, Acoustics. the speed of sound.

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C ⁴ American  

[see] / si /

Or c

noun

C's, plural Cs, plural c's, plural cs plural

1. the third letter of the English alphabet, a consonant.

2. any spoken sound represented by the letter C or c, as in cat, race, or circle.

3. something having the shape of a C .

4. a written or printed representation of the letter C or c.

5. a device, as a printer's type, for reproducing the letter C or c.

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C ⁵ American  

noun

1. Computers. a high-level programming language: very powerful and flexible, it is used in a wide variety of applications.

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C ⁶ American  

abbreviation

1. cocaine.

2. Grammar. complement.

3. consonant.

4. Electricity. coulomb.

5. county (used with a number to designate a county road).

   C55.

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C ⁷ American  

Symbol.

1. the third in order or in a series.

2. (in some grading systems) a grade or mark, as in school or college, indicating the quality of a student's work as fair or average. Sometimes c

3. Music.

   1. the first tone, or keynote, in the scale of C major or the third tone in the relative minor scale, A minor.

   2. a string, key, or pipe tuned to this tone.

   3. a written or printed note representing this tone.

   4. (in the fixed system of solmization) the first tone of the scale of C major, called do.

   5. the tonality having C as the tonic note.

   6. a symbol indicating quadruple time and appearing after the clef sign on a musical staff.

4. the Roman numeral for 100. Sometimes c

5. Celsius.

6. centigrade.

7. Electricity.

   1. capacitance.

   2. a battery size for 1.5 volt dry cells: diameter, 1 inch (2.5 centimeters); length, 1.9 inches (4.8 centimeters).

8. Chemistry. carbon.

9. Physics.

   1. charge conjugation

   2. charm.

10. Biochemistry.

    1. cysteine.

    2. cytosine.

11. Slang. Also a hundred-dollar bill.

12. a proportional shoe width size, narrower than D and wider than B.

13. a proportional brassiere cup size, smaller than D and larger than B.

14. the lowest quality rating for a corporate or municipal bond.

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c̄ ⁸ American  

Or c.

1. (in prescriptions) with.

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C- ⁹ American  

U.S. Military.

1. (in designations of transport aircraft) cargo.

   C-54; C-124.

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c. ¹⁰ American  

abbreviation

1. gallon.

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c. ¹¹ American  

abbreviation

1. Optics. candle; candles. Also c

2. carat.

3. carbon.

4. carton.

5. case.

6. Baseball. catcher.

7. cathode.

8. cent; cents.

9. centavo.

10. Football. center.

11. centigrade.

12. centime.

13. centimeter.

14. century.

15. chairman; chairperson.

16. chapter.

17. chief.

18. child.

19. church.

20. cirrus.

21. city.

22. cloudy.

23. cognate.

24. color.

25. copper.

26. copyright.

27. corps.

28. cubic.

29. cycle; cycles. Also c

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C. ¹² American  

abbreviation

1. Calorie.

2. Cape.

3. Catholic.

4. Celsius.

5. Celtic.

6. Centigrade.

7. College.

8. (in Costa Rica and El Salvador) colon; colons.

9. Congress.

10. Conservative.

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C ¹ British  

symbol

1. music

   1. a note having a frequency of 261.63 hertz ( middle C ) or this value multiplied or divided by any power of 2; the first degree of a major scale containing no sharps or flats ( C major )

   2. a key, string, or pipe producing this note

   3. the major or minor key having this note as its tonic

   4. a time signature denoting four crotchet beats to the bar See also alla breve common time

2. chem carbon

3. biochem cytosine

4. capacitance

5. heat capacity

6. cold (water)

7. physics compliance

8. Celsius

9. centigrade

10. century

    C20

11. coulomb

12. 100 See Roman numerals

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abbreviation

1. Cuba (international car registration)

noun

1. a computer programming language combining the advantages of a high-level language with the ability to address the computer at a level comparable with that of an assembly language

c ² British  

symbol

1. centi-

2. cubic

3. cycle

4. maths constant

5. specific heat capacity

6. the speed of light and other types of electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum

7. chess See algebraic notation

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c. ³ British  

abbreviation

1. carat

2. cricket caught

3. cent(s)

4. century or centuries

5. (used esp preceding a date) circa

   c. 1800

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c ⁴ British  

/ siː /

noun

1. the third letter and second consonant of the modern English alphabet

2. a speech sound represented by this letter, in English usually either a voiceless alveolar fricative, as in cigar, or a voiceless velar stop, as in case

3. the third in a series, esp the third highest grade in an examination

4. 1. something shaped like a C

   2. ( in combination )

      a C-spring

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C. ⁵ British  

abbreviation

1. (on maps as part of name) Cape

2. Catholic

3. Celtic

4. Conservative

5. Corps

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C- ⁶ British  

abbreviation

1. cargo transport

   C-5

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c/- ⁷ British  

abbreviation

1. care of

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c Scientific  

1. The symbol for the speed of light in a vacuum.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• C's
  plural
• Cs
  plural
• c's
  plural
• cs
  plural

Etymology

Origin of c¹

From Latin circā, circiter, circum

Origin of c̄⁸

From the Latin word cum

Origin of c.¹⁰

From the Latin word congius

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

c C C- c. C. C's Cs c's cs

The newly confirmed planets, TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c, orbit an F7-type dwarf star about 1,110 light years from Earth in the southern constellation Volans.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 27, 2026

No wonder Edmund Burke, from the studio of Joshua Reynolds c.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 13, 2026

Instead of having just three parameters—a, b, and c in this quadratic—the latest A.I. chatbots are estimated to have trillions of parameters.

From Slate ● May 25, 2026

Not every editor is quite as catholic with a little c, as ecumenical, as excited about such a range of writing as I am.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 13, 2026

Yellow is a, brown is b, and red is c.

From "A Mango-Shaped Space" by Wendy Mass

Graham was known as a C student in high school, and was the first member of his family to attend college.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 12, 2026

One source claimed that the invitees’ arrival times were staggered such that there were A, B, C, and D lists.

From Salon ● Jul. 9, 2026

In the end however she was replaced by Mel C before the group went on to achieve worldwide fame as the Spice Girls.

From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026

However, the researchers emphasize that this was an observational study, meaning it cannot determine whether vitamin C directly causes these differences in brain structure or function.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 1, 2026

“The L and C program is on an outlier island about a ten-minute boat ride away,” she said.

From "Glitch" by Laura Martin

For the word “cat,” for example, they must be able to segment the sound C-A-T, and then figure out what happens if they remove the C- sound.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2025

While it is hard to find universal statistics for everyone on Earth, European researchers estimated in a study published in 2018 that more than 0.5 percent of people in Germany suffer from C- PTSD.

From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2023

"You might be fine. But you might get a C-, so why would you do that?" she said.

From Reuters ● Feb. 16, 2023

Its answer would’ve probably earned a C or C-.

From Slate ● Dec. 13, 2022

She holds my current grades by two fingers: D, C, B-, D, C-, C, A. No basketball team for me, because the A was in art, so my GPA is a whopping 1.7.

From "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson

Also on display is Giotto’s earliest known work, a “Madonna and Child” of c. 1285-90, which dates from the period of the artist’s first arrival in Assisi.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 11, 2026

Taped to the bottom of an Art Deco ceramic vase, for example, she has written: “Weller, Forest c. 1920. Paid $1 at a yard sale. Took to Antiques Roadshow in the 1990s. Valued at $250-$350.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2025

The two panels, sometimes known as the “New York Diptych,” are dated c. 1440-1441, near the end of van Eyck’s life.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 14, 2020

“That’s the small c. But the big C in my life is Christianity.”

From Slate ● Dec. 23, 2019

The inscription turned out to be a date: September 3,32 b. c. , in today’s calendar.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann

Senate President Thomas C. Alexander, who started his Seneca legal practice around the same time as Graham.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026

The researchers determined that almost all images captured by the largest camera ever built -- part of the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile -- would be rendered unusable.

From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026

The landscape inspired the author C. S. Lewis to create his fictional land Narnia, the setting for his chronicles including, most famously, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

From BBC ● Jun. 30, 2026

The advance is expected to help astronomers take full advantage of the enormous datasets that will soon arrive from next generation sky surveys, particularly those conducted by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 29, 2026

Not long after they established their shorts against the big Wall Street banks, they had a visit from a prominent analyst who covered the firms, Brad Hintz, at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

The buzz: Though lacking the sizzle of Brazil-Morocco, Group C’s other first-day matchup is no less important.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 10, 2026

In high school, I received mostly B’s and C’s, and I didn’t study for the SATs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 2, 2025

Baby C's mother said she had not been handed the full report until eight years after her son's death.

From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2024

Plan C’s website maintains a full list of options for obtaining abortion pills by state.

From Slate ● Jun. 18, 2024

If only a few of the C's are going to be sharp, then those C's are marked individually with a sharp sign right in front of them.

From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones

Only eight banks got Bs, while the majority got Cs; 36 got Ds.

From MarketWatch ● Feb. 27, 2026

The 16-year-old hopes to get a minimum of five Cs, including maths and Welsh, to study for a Level 3 in agricultural engineering at Coleg Glynllifon.

From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2025

"And by now, they would have found them. There would be plan Bs and plan Cs, to make sure that we have reduced this exposure to the US."

From BBC ● Jun. 10, 2025

A significant amount of radioactive Cs was released from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactors in particulate form.

From Science Daily ● May 15, 2024

I popped my last two vitamin Cs and imagined the wrapped-in-a-blanket feeling I’d had when Mom was with me.

From "When You Reach Me" by Rebecca Stead

Beyond consent, the other two c’s, credit and compensation, have their own challenges, as illustrated even now with the high cost of litigation regarding infringements of copyright or patents.

From Scientific American ● Aug. 7, 2023

“It hasn’t rained in months,” she said, her Tuscan Italian full of soft g’s and c’s.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 4, 2021

On the other hand I can always tell you that I lost a spelling bee to Juanita Meyers in the fifth grade; the word was necessary, I misspelled it with two "c's."

From New York Times ● Apr. 30, 2016

Hard consonants - k's, d's, hard c's and hard g's - gave me hell.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 21, 2010

I think about the curling g's and c's she was so proud to mark on her pages and show Du Barry when we were little.

From "The Belles" by Dhonielle Clayton

A contestant in the Season 3 premiere lays out her "four cs" theory of success: "courage, creativity, cash and celebrity."

From Time Magazine Archive

In early Latin, cs was often written for x.

From Latin Pronunciation A Short Exposition of the Roman Method by Peck, Harry Thurston

Longitudinal section of flower; v, bracteole on the peduncle; l, sepals; ls, appendage of sepal; c, petals; cs, spur of the lower petals; fs, glandular appendage of the lower stamens; a, anthers.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 5 "Fleury, Claude" to "Foraker" by Various

Of these, x was equivalent to cs, while the equivalence of z is uncertain.

From New Latin Grammar by Bennett, Charles E. (Charles Edwin)

Make 7 more cs, joining between a and bs in the same manner. d.

From The Ladies' Work-Book Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. by Unknown

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