Perhaps the most-hated word in the English language, moist sounds decidedly less-gross when it's madidus.
Thus, for an ancient Roman, when life gave you limus, you couldn’t make lemonade … but you at least had a cute word for a gross substance. Limus // Slimeīefore medieval Latin gave English the lemon ( limo) and the many zesty, clean-sounding words that go along with it (lemon-fresh, lemongrass, lemonade), there was limus. It’s the kind of death at which the Romans excelled: being killed in some gruesome way. There’s death ( mors) and then there’s death ( letum or nex). Wouldn’t the world be more pleasant if, upon encountering uncleanliness, we simply sighed to see such inquinamentum? 9. There seem to be a dozen English words for gross matter (crud, dirt, grime, muck, scum, smut) and they all have one syllable and a percussive beat. But if you want to describe an offensively fetid smell in Latin, you have to use graveolentia. Graveolentia // A Rank SmellĮnglish uses the Latin odor as a polite word for a stink. But it sounds so upright that its English-adjective cousin fastidious has become a term of respect for meticulous work. In Latin, fastidium means to feel nauseated by something. A desire for revenge he called anger ( ira), chronic anger he called hatred ( odium), and that feeling of heat you get before you blow a gasket he called excandescentia. Marcus Tullius Cicero, the most eloquent of all Romans, once took pains to describe the many types of vexation. Hamlet used it in his “To be, or not to be” speech (“the proud man’s contumely”), but most of us probably had to look up what he meant.
Though it sounds like it might grow in a garden, contumelia actually refers to cruel speech or even physical violence. Though it’s not what we call our sewers, English did take up the word cloaca in a scientific context: It’s the anatomical term for the posterior orifice of birds, fish, and monotremes like the platypus.
ELOQUENT WORDS FOR TERRIBLE FULL
Just because it’s full of you-know-what doesn’t mean it deserves an ugly name. Amaritudo // BitternessĪmaritudo looks like it has to do with love, but it’s actually the feeling you might get if you were betrayed by your amour. English absorbed a lot of other Latin words for trouble: adversity, calamity, distress, tribulation. Aerumna // Hardshipĭon’t let life’s aerumnae get you down.
With that in mind, here are 20 more lovely Latin words for life’s least pleasant things. Imagine if they had taken their own advice and called it Bits to Know about Writing instead of The Elements of Style.
ELOQUENT WORDS FOR TERRIBLE MANUAL
By using two words with Latin roots they’ve made something as unpleasant as a grammar and usage manual sound chic. Notice, for example, the title of Strunk and White’s book. Sometimes the dreadful things we must suffer can seem a little less grim when they have the sweet ring-nay, the dulcet tones of euphonious polysyllabic Latin appellations. They get your thoughts out there in a forthright, and yes, lively way.īut not everything in life calls for lively, earthy words. The oldest English words are often short, strong, and easy to understand. In their timeless Elements of Style, Strunk and write that “Anglo-Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words.” It’s good advice.
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