When speaking Spanish, you may encounter the abbreviation Vd. for the second person singular pronoun “usted” instead of the more common Ud. This abbreviation stems from the word “vusted,” where the “v” eventually merged into the rest of the word by the seventeenth century, leaving us with Vd. as a remnant. “Vusted” itself is a contraction of the phrase “vuestra merced,” which translates to “your grace” or “your mercy” in English. The term “vuestra” comes from the Latin word vestra, the feminine second person plural possessive pronoun, derived from Proto-Italic westeros from the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction wos. On the other hand, “merced” originates from the Latin word merces, meaning “pay” or “reward,” and is also related to words like “mercy,” “commerce,” “Mercury,” “market,” and “mercenary” (with potential Etruscan origins through Latin merx and Proto-Italic merk).
