“And that hashtag is wrong. It should always be v not vs. The ‘v’ never stood for versus, it stood for ‘vel’, meaning ‘or’. As in, ‘The gladiator or the lion is coming out of that arena alive.’” #WIvsENG
https://twitter.com/ucsoldboyscc/status/1094362086216482817
“And ‘versus’ wasn’t even the way to say ‘against’, in that sense. That probably would’ve been ‘contra’. So it’s ‘v’ not ‘vs’ or ‘versus’. And yes, I still think Root should be at 3 with everyone else at 8.” #WIvsENG
https://twitter.com/ucsoldboyscc/status/1094362736799219715
Is there any truth in this (particularly in the "vel" bit)?
The few dictionaries that I consulted maintain "versus", but I'm still curious… (The Latin "vel" does or can mean "or", so there's that.)
Best Answer
The etymology of "versus" is pretty simple. It came from Latin and it was originally used in English in the law sense (as it's still used today: Roe v. Wade). Later on it started to be used more flexibly.
There are several abbreviations that have been used for versus: v., vs., and ver. Both vs. and v. (with and without the period) are mentioned in Oxford Dictionaries as currently acceptable abbreviations.
The Oxford English Dictionary has this as its first citation for versus:
(The MED has the same quote as its first citation for versus.)
It's pretty easy, at least for me, to see the similarities between the legal sense and the general (or sports) sense.
I also looked up contra and vel in the OED. Contra has never been used in English in quite this way (i.e. placed between two people or things to indicate opposition). Vel doesn't even have an entry (although it is part of the expression vel non "or not"), meaning that it was never really used in English.
Lastly, according to the answers given to the Latin SE questions “Us versus them” - opposite of “noster”? and What's the difference between vel, aut, -ve, et cetera? it would be aut (not vel) that would be used in Latin between two opposing parties.