And so on: Abbr.

Once upon a time, there was a lazy student who never wanted to finish her homework. She would start her math problems, and when the going got tough, she would write down “3 + 4 = ___, etc.” and move on to the next question.

One day, her wise teacher noticed her lack of effort and asked her why she kept writing “etc.” instead of solving the problems. The student replied, “I figured ‘etc.‘ means ‘and so on’, so I thought I could get away with not doing the rest.”

Her teacher chuckled and said, “Well, ‘etc.‘ does mean ‘and so on’, but it’s not an excuse to avoid doing the work.” The teacher then proceeded to explain that using “etc.” in the right context means that there are more items to add to a list, but that it should never be a substitute for completing a task.

From then on, the student learned her lesson and stopped relying on “etc.” to avoid hard work. Instead, she used it to add more items when creating a list – such as when completing a crossword puzzle with clues like “And so on: Abbr.” which lead to the answer “ETC“.