et al.

¹ American  

[et al, ahl, awl] / ɛt ˈæl, ˈɑl, ˈɔl /

abbreviation

1. and others.

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et al. ² American  

[et al, ahl, awl] / ɛt ˈæl, ˈɑl, ˈɔl /

abbreviation

1. and elsewhere.

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et al. British  

abbreviation

1. et alibi

2. et alii

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Usage

What does et al. mean? Et al. is an abbreviation used to mean “and others.” It’s usually used when listing people, and it always comes at the end of the list. Et al. comes from Latin and is an abbreviation of et aliī (or variations of the phrase), literally translating as “and others.”It’s typically used in cases in which people are being listed, but there are too many (or there is not enough space) to list all of them by name. It’s commonly used in academic writing when citing a written work that has several authors. What is the difference between et al. and etc. (et cetera)? Although et cetera literally translates as “and the other,” as in “and the other things,” it’s typically used to mean “and so on” or “and so forth”—meaning something like “and similar things.”Example: The groundbreaking study was conducted by Eiseman et al.

Etymology

Origin of et al.¹

< Latin et aliī (masculine plural), et alia (neuter plural)

Origin of et al.²

From Latin et alibi

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

et al.

Madison, Hamilton, et al. would wonder at our credulous view of human nature.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026

"Subsecond dopamine fluctuations do not specify the vigor of ongoing actions" by Haixin Liu and Nicolas Tritsch et al., was published in Nature Neuroscience.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 22, 2025

To get around this awkwardness, Winthrop et al. propagated the notion—formalized in the colony’s 1629 seal—that the Native Americans needed the new settlers for their own good.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025

Which is why, this election week, I’m considering my counterprogramming options — with periodic check-ins on Kornacki, King, et al., to see where the count stands.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2024

In a 2012 study, Patil et al. examined the neural underpinnings of musical timbre in order to understand the underlying processes of timbre recognition.

From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin