Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Mundane
“Mundane” means dull or ordinary. It comes from the Latin word “mundus,” meaning “of the world,” as opposed to “spiritual or heavenly.”
Latin is often called a dead language, but it is alive and well in most of the Romance languages, including French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. It’s estimated that about 80% of the entries in any English dictionary are borrowed mainly from Latin. A little Latin goes a long way. The Latin root aud, meaning “to hear,” also gives us the English words audio, auditory, auditorium, audience, audition, even audit. They all have to do with listening.
Some phrases we commonly use are obviously Latin, such as cum laude, per diem and pro bono. Quid pro quo is Latin for “something for something,” used to mean of equal exchange or substitution. De facto means “in fact” and cum laude is “with honor.”Bona fide, literally “good faith,” is used to indicate something is genuine, as in Maureen Milliken is a bona fide author. Ad hoc means “for this.” Ad hoc committees are created as needed. Et cetera literally means “and the rest,” vice versa is “change order,” and rigor mortis is “the stiffness of death.”
Many English words used daily are less obviously Latin, like “obvious” which is actually Latin for “in the way,” meaning easily or clearly noticed. Agenda is “a list of things to be done” and alibi is Latin for “elsewhere,” what any criminal hopes to be able to prove. Facsimile is “exact copy” or literally, “make like.” Twenty centuries later it became the “fax” in fax machine. QED, the abbreviation for quod erat demonstrandum, appears at the end of text to indicate that the point has been made or the argument has been proven. It’s an effective close and the Latin equivalent of a mic drop.
