Skip Navigation
17 comments

  • Seems to miss some big ones and providing understanding of them.

    “Et cetera”

    • “and other things”
    • abbreviated to “etc”
    • not pronounced “excetera” … but honestly I wouldn’t worry about it because this is the sort of alteration the Romans would have made and did make, and language is always evolving.
    • IMO, basically a distinct English word now

    “Exempli gratia”

    • “for the sake of an example” / “for example”
    • abbreviated “eg”
    • basically a distinct English word now in the abbreviated form, pronounced “ee gee”.
    • easily substituted with a plain English translation “for example”

    “Id est”

    • “that is”
    • abbreviated “ie”
    • like the above, basically a distinct English word now, IMO.
    • easily substituted with its plain English equivalent: “that is”
      • especially given how close the Latin is to the English …. Notice how similar the two phrases sound … that’s not a coincidence, these languages are related after all.

    • Yeah this is a somewhat bad guide at least as far as some of these entries

      I would also add:

      • ad hoc = sort of made up for this one situation; "ad hoc attendance system" means they're not following the structure; carries an implication that it's more or less working but maybe not the best way
      • de facto = it doesn't have the designation but regardless of that, the meaning of the designation is what's happening; "de facto manager" means they don't have the manager title but that's the job they are doing
      • per se = I'm being nitpicky about details so please be careful not to read anything into my statements other than what's specifically said; "he didn't drive off the road per se, but he skidded on the turn and he was way out of his lane"

      • Yea, the point of any thing like this would be to provide a better grip on what's going on with these phrases and to break down the opacity of their coming from another language.

        The thing with latin though is that it isn't quite an alien language to english speakers ... so many components of it have ended up in language that an english speaker can kind of "triangulate" some of it.

        The "ad" in "ad hoc", for instance. It's the same "ad" in "advance" or "addition" "admit". And "hoc" is related to English "here". It literally means "toward this (thing)", which takes on the meaning "for the purpose of this thing" ... that is, being "for a specific thing", not "general purpose".

    • “Exempli gratia”

      abbreviated “eg”

      I never thought e.g. could have latin roots, I thought "e.g." was just "example given" abbreviated.

      • That's totally fair! "Exempli gratia" is fairly esoteric. Even as far as latin goes, it's not the most straightforward to translate.

        My general point is though, that "eg" can easily stand for "example given" ... it's such a mainstay of english now, without "exempli gratia" being commonly known at all.

      • I always thought that i.e. was "in example"

17 comments