cf
part of speech
abbreviation (cf. — written only)
meaning for a pupil
(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 →
sense 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
- 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 →
- 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).
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «cf» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.