Strange spelling of final m

Question

In a 16th century Latin treatise published in Poland several occurences of the final m have the form of ꝫ (in Unicode U+A76B LATIN SMALL LETTER ET). You can find more information about the work at https://github.com/jsbien/Zaborowski-index4djview. An illustration demonstrating that sonum and scilitet end with the same letter can be found in the preprint https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341930612 (available on request). Is there an explanation? I will appreciate your comments.

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation#Marks_with_relative_meaning — Sebastian Koppehel, Oct 15 '20 at 17:09
@Sebastian Koppehel, I don't see the relevance of this Wikipedia entry to my question. — Janusz S. Bień, Oct 15 '20 at 17:22
The Wikipedia article says that the et mark "after a, e, u vowels meant -m not us or ei, if after an o it meant -nem", but there's no citation for that (and it's explained in kind of a roundabout way). — Draconis, Oct 16 '20 at 00:15
@Draconis The whole text is, however, very closely based on the Lexicon Abbreviaturarum (German edition). The explanation there is slightly less confusing if you can read German, much more if not. I couldn't find the Italian original edition online. — Sebastian Koppehel, Oct 16 '20 at 03:10
@Sebastian Koppehel Thank you very much! I missed the relevant passage in the entry at first reading. I'm also not aware of the original edition of Lexicon Abbreviaturarum online, but there is an English edition (and the interactive one but without the preface). — Janusz S. Bień, Oct 16 '20 at 05:42
@SebastianKoppehel Could write up the relevant bit into an answer? It doesn't have to be long. — Joonas Ilmavirta, Oct 16 '20 at 07:18

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 16 '20 at 16:01

According to the introduction to Capelli's abbreviation dictionary (section 4.281), as translated by Heimann and Kay:

When the ꝫ-mark occurs at the end of a word and is preceded by the vowel a, e, or u, it generally does not stand for -us or -et, but rather for m. It is almost always written on the same line as the other letters in the word, for example: naꝫ = nam; o̅e̅ꝫ = omnem; h̅i̅tuꝫ = habitum.

(Section 4.28 in general is dedicated to this sign, and goes through various other meanings in other contexts, such as -nem with preceded by o or -rum when marked with an additional slash.)

Strange spelling of final m

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