Why is "number" abbreviated as "no"?

Question

When there is no "o" in number?

Answer 1

Good question. Have you ever pondered the origin of the contraction "ain't" ? { there ain't no positive form of ain't.}

Answer 2

As the article entry listed above notes, "no" is an abbreviation for the Latin 'ablative form' "numero"... but that leaves several questions

1) Why Latin?
2) Why the ABLATIVE form?
3) Why use the -o at the end instead of the FIRST letters ("nu")?

1) When the abbreviation was invented English scholars were still writing their works in Latin (the 'international scholarly language'). When they switched to writing in English, they often stuck with familiar abbreviations, and many of them persist to this day. Cf., i.e., e.g., viz., etc...

(Also note that, just as we say "number" rather than "numero" when we see "no", we should use the English equivalent for such Latin abbreviations in English texts. [In other words, the list above should be read as -- compare, that is, for example, namely, and so forth.])

See Latin abbreviation list - http://list-of-latin-phrases.area51.ipupdater.com/

2) The "base" form in Latin, which you might have expected, is "numerus". The ablative form was used here because that fit the usage English writers needed when they introduced the form into English in the 17th century , viz., in expressions of the sort "men, in number three".

3) The use of the 'first and last letters' here is not quite the same as "Mr" for mister, because in this case the "o" is not part of the "root word" at all, but simply a case ending added on.

The choice of the first letter of the root word plus the case ending is related to the fact that the original texts that used it were written in or based on Latin. "No" made it clear WHICH case was intended. When writing in a language that uses case to show the FUNCTION of a noun in the sentence, this ending can be very important to correctly interpreting the sentence. Thus it was not at all unusual for noun abbreviations based on Latin (or Greek) to include a case ending in the abbreviation.

Actually, in its original form this abbreviation was written in a may that made if very clear that the "o" was the suffix and NOT part of the word's root. It was written with a SUPERSCRIPT [raised] o, often with the o underlined. (You will still see this in print and in painted signs, though it became less common in ordinary use because typewriters were generally not able to type superscript.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numero_sign

(The practice of abbreviating a word by its first letter or two plus the case ending is ancient. For example, in the early church --by the 2nd century-- copies of the Greek New Testament would abbreviate the divine names by using the first letter or two followed by the case ending, with a line over the whole to mark it as an abbreviation.)
http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/NominaSacra.html

Answer 3

To indicate a particular numerical label, the abbreviation "no." is sometimes used (deriving from "numero," the ablative case of the Latin "numerus"), as is the less common "nr." The symbol # (known as the octothorpe) is commonly used to denote "number."

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Number.html

Answer 4

Look your making my brain ache please take some blond pills your acting way to smart. Ps hope your ok x x x

Answer 5

You got me on that one.