LATIN WORD OF THE YEAR 2025 – VOX ANNI MMXXV

After a record-breaking vote the Latin Word of the Year 2025 has been chosen: rhonchissator!

Rhonchissator (pronounced “wrong-kiss-SAH-tor”), a Latin agent noun meaning “snorer”, has soundly resonated with more than a third of all participants (521 of the total of 1374 votes registered). The word’s popularity is likely a testament not only to its rhonchous charm, but also to the persistent sleepiness many of us experience at the end of the year. Perhaps, too, some share a home or an office with an enthusiastically snoring human (or animal) being. Others still may proudly proclaim for themselves the grand title of rhonchissator maximus. Possibly coined by an ancient scholar trying to explain another extremely rare word (nasator “someone who uses their nose”) and (mis?)spelled runcissator in both manuscripts that preserve it, rhonchissator has lived a life of blissful obscurity for many centuries. But surely now, gently awoken from its millennial slumber (by the article author Hugo Beikircher) and instantly propelled to global Latin fame (by being voted Latin Word of the Year 2025), rhonchissator will be a sleeper agent no more.

Also deserving of a special mention in this year’s contest is rir (which ranked in second place with 28% of the vote), another word only transmitted to us through the industry and ingenuity of late-antique glossators, who were in many ways the precursors of modern-day lexicographers. (To learn more about ancient glossaries, a veritable treasure-trove of uncommon and bizarre Latin words, you can consult the TLL-affiliated Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum Online and read about the brand new TGL-ReACH.) That this verbal representation of a dog’s growl (“grrrrrrrrrrr…”) did not take this year’s top prize may be partly owed to the 2024 winner, the similarly onomatopoeic retotatototato, and could, if more tentatively, suggest that there is a higher percentage of cat lovers than canine afficionados among everyday Latinists. (More information about these and the other candidates in the 2025 contest can be found here.)

We wish all readers and supporters of the TLL a snore-filled conclusion to 2025 and a snarl-free start to the new year, and we warmly thank all the participants who voted in and shared this year’s contest!

Previous Latin Words of the Year can be found here: rescellularesocio, retotatototato. For more information about the Thesaurus linguae Latinae, please visit our website, follow our blog and podcast. If you want to learn more about how a Latin dictionary is made, consider applying to the 2026 TLL Latin Lexicography Summer School.

If you would like to support the Thesaurus linguae Latinae, please donate to the Friends of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae non-profit organization. Its most immediate goal is to build an endowment to support an American postdoctoral fellow, now that the National Endowment for the Humanities has terminated the grant that has funded this fellowship every year since 1984.

Text by Massimo Cè (University of Basel) and Adam Gitner (Thesaurus linguae Latinae).


OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Adam Gitner (17. Dezember 2025). LATIN WORD OF THE YEAR 2025 – VOX ANNI MMXXV. Parerga. Abgerufen am 11. März 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/15d54


Ein Gedanke zu „LATIN WORD OF THE YEAR 2025 – VOX ANNI MMXXV

  1. Karl Boyé

    Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
    liebes Team,

    so etwas gehört in den Ticker der dpa und der Leitmedien – und vor allem: AUF DEUTSCH und dann vielleicht noch auf Latein!

    Karl Boyé

    Antworten

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