A diacritical mark with various forms, attached to the e of the e caudata used to indicate an abbreviation of ae or sometimes of oe, sometimes used on another letter when the e is omitted.
Later, around the turn of the 18th century, when Polish antiqua prints had become more usual, the cauda ‘tail’ of <ę> was placed under the back nasal, too, which resulted in modern <ą>. 2012, Daniel Bunčić, “The standardization of Polish orthography in the 16th century”, in Susan Baddeley, Anja Voeste, director, Orthographiesin Early Modern Europe, De Gruyter Mouton, page 236:
The cauda of the e-caudata is extended. Ligatures of -st, -rt, -et and -nt are used. 2010, Sinéad O'Sullivan, “The Oldest Gloss Tradition on Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii”, in Glossae aeui Carolini in libros I-II De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, Brepols, page l:
e-caudata is employed for h[a]ec and qu[a]e and the cauda has the open wishbone or hook form, used also by Beta and Sigma. 2025, Julia Crick, “The Form and Shape of the Manuscript”, in Stephen Baxter, Julia Crick, C. P. Lewis, director, Making Domesday: Intelligent Power in Conquered England, page 143:
The imitation is produced by systematic use of letters that because of their morphology and their position in the word are identified as “ancient” [...] : the conjunction handled via the ampersand (&) in place of the tironian et; tall s not only internally to the word but also at the end; d with a straight ascender instead of the Uncial variant with oblique ascender; straight r after a curve in place of the so-called round r; g formed of two circular sections connected to one another by a short vertical stroke; e with a cedilla or cauda (ę) and sometimes the nexus æ to indicate the diphthong; majuscules with origin in capitalis in the text. 2020, Teresa de Robertis, “Humanistic script: Italy”, in Frank T. Coulson, Robert G. Babcock, director, The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography, Oxford University Press, page 522: