Talk:Institution of Civil Engineers

Dates

In olden days, dates were not always spelled out in full, but used the following terms or abbreviations:

• ult.
• inst.
• etc.

Due to mail by ship being slow before the age of undersea telegraph cables, months elapsed between events in UK and their reporting in far off colonies.

(QNNA)What did these terms/abbreviations mean? FarleyBrook (talk) 02:24, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the first two refer to the month. ult. meaning previous (i.e. August) and inst. meaning current month (i.e. September) but no idea what etc. would mean in this context. Heritagejim (talk) 08:13, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, so far.

The third one is "prox." meaning "proximo", which seems to mean "next month", as used in Day Log/1875-01-29.

"Ult." means "ultimo", as used in Day Log/1896-08-28. There is an old suburb in Sydney, N S Wales called "Ultimo".

"Inst." means "instant", as used in Day Log/1881-03-04. FarleyBrook (talk) 08:42, 26 September 2015 (UTC)