And the 'cetera' means essentially 'the rest'. Though it is common in modern usage to to use 'et cetera' to imply a continued list of items not named. A stricter interpretation would only use 'et cetera' to refer to the rest of a full list that has been previously explicitly enumerated earlier in the text.
As an example:
The authors of the text were James, Malik, Susan, Srini, and Ying. ... <some more text goes here> ... This was the primary finding supported by Srini, James, etc.
Above, the usage of 'etc' is to shorten the sentence, by avoiding a second instance of the full list.
A simple translation to English shows that the common usage can leave much up to the interpretation of the reader.
As an example:
I like sweet foods: cherries, apples, grapes, and the rest.
So, do I actually mean fruits? Do I mean all other sweet foods that exist? This sentence leaves a lot of interpretation to the reader, and depends on shared context to have any useful meaning. This usage of 'et cetera' generally means "and more in a sequence made up of items categorically in line with what I've named, which I assume, you, the reader, can infer."
This reply is not meant to critique modern usage. Language is a fluid thing, and the use delineating implication, rather than eliding a fully enumerated list, is perfectly acceptable in the vernacular. I just wanted to share some additional nuance regarding the phrase.
Increasingly I’d say I observe et al. being used for (a) lists of people, and (b) finite, known lists; and etc. being used for lists of unknown length. (You may notice there is some unspecified area in that classification. This is deliberate.) This is a definite shift from the original Latin.
Ah, good catch. You are spot on. Names were just the first thing I thought of when trying to come up with an example.
Thinking about it a bit more, there is a strong convention in functional languages to decompose lists into "first" and "rest" (regardless of what your language cares to name the functions that return these concepts). Especially in the case of infinite streams, "etc" seems to align with what you've described as the shifting usage in the term. I doubt CS is driving the shift in meaning. Just an interesting parallel I noticed.
FYI, the “et” means “and”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera is good reading.