It is an abbreviation of 'et cetera' ( mentioned above already )
It is of Latin origin and means " and other things".
It refers to the other things belonging to the same category of the examples mentioned before in the sentence as shown in Tracie's example . Those other things are not necessarily objects ,they could be cities, names , descriptions etc .... ( here "etc" is used to refer to all other nouns that could belong to the category ).
Another example :
He travelled all over Europe ,he visited the most beautiful cities such as Rome , Paris, Budapest , Madrid ...etc .
Here 'etc' refer to a number of other european cities he might have visited.
I hope the meaning is clearer now :)