cf

Everyday

(formal, writing) Short for the Latin word «confer», meaning «compare»; it tells the reader to look at another thing and compare it with this one. tree →

In the lessons

It appears in dictionaries, textbooks and notes, often in brackets: «(cf. page 12)». It tells the reader: look at this other example too, it is similar or different in a useful way. Children mostly meet it in reference books. It is not said aloud as a word; people say «compare».

Examples

• Rabbit (cf. hare) is a smaller animal with shorter ears. tree →
• The text says "cf. chapter 3" so I turned to chapter 3. tree →
• The dictionary wrote "cf. affect" next to "effect". tree →
• In the notes it said: warm-blooded, cf. cold-blooded. tree →
• Cf. means "compare", not "see also" exactly. tree →
• The teacher wrote "cf. last week's poem" on the board. tree →

Note

An abbreviation, not a word: written «cf.» with a full stop (period), often in lower case. Say it as «compare» when reading aloud. It is different from «e.g.» (for example) and «i.e.» (that is). It is not a short form of «confer» in its modern English meaning (to talk together or give an award).

In Jewish tradition

It appears in dictionaries, textbooks and notes, often in brackets: «(cf. page 12)». It tells the reader: look at this other example too, it is similar or different in a useful way. Children mostly meet it in reference books. It is not said aloud as a word; people say «compare».

Examples

• In the Bahir, the Thirty-Two Ways are associated with the gematria value of לֵב lev ‘heart’ ([Bahir 63], [Bahir 95] inter alia cf. (Sefer Yetzirah, Sefaria community translation) tree →
• On one level, it refers to the individual person or creature, i.e., ‘that which has breath’, similar to the term נְשָׁמָה neshamah (cf. [Psalm 150:6]), and might be translated ‘person, individual, being’. (Sefer Yetzirah, Sefaria community translation) tree →
• Most literally, it means ‘waste(land)’, the lifeless open desert, a translation of [Genesis 1:2] so far captured in English only by Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible (2019), who poetically renders תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ tohu vavohu as “waste and welter”; cf. (Sefer Yetzirah, Sefaria community translation) tree →

Note

An abbreviation, not a word: written «cf.» with a full stop (period), often in lower case. Say it as «compare» when reading aloud. It is different from «e.g.» (for example) and «i.e.» (that is). It is not a short form of «confer» in its modern English meaning (to talk together or give an award).