Schlagwort-Archive: Latin

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).

Latin Word of the Year 2024

The vote for Latin Word of the Year 2024 is now closed. The results can be found here.

With the Vox Anni contest now in its third season, the Thesaurus linguae Latinae community is excited to share with you the contestants for Latin Word of the Year 2024. (Learn more about the previous winners, rescellula and resocio.)

Whether you are a professional Classicist, a fan of sword-and-sandal cinema, or simply Latin-curious, we invite you to choose your favorite word from the five finalists below. Polls will remain open until December 19, 2024, midnight (Central European Time). The winner will be announced on this blog on December 20 and via social media.

The finalists for this year’s Latin Word of the Year are (in alphabetical order):

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VOX ANNI MMXXII

For some end-of-the-year fun and in rivalry with contests in the vernacular, the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae invites you to vote on the first ever Ancient Latin Word of the Year!

What counts as an Ancient Latin Word of the Year? We’ve settled on three criteria:

  • The TLL entry was published or completed for publication in 2022.
  • The word is “new” in the sense that the word is not found in any of the standard ancient Latin dictionaries (Oxford Latin Dictionary, Lewis & Short, Georges, Gaffiot, etc.).
  • The word is in some form or another relevant to the events of 2022 or otherwise funny and interesting. This is where you come in!

These criteria show that even ancient Latin has new words every year. They also showcase in a lighthearted way the range of words that can be found in the TLL and what we’ve accomplished in 2022 by completing two new fascicles (IX.1.4 nemo–netura and forthcoming XI.2.9 reproduco–resilio). The TLL can be consulted via its open access platform or via TLL Online (more features with subscription).

After a nail-biting vote at the TLL Holiday Party last week, a long list of contestants has been narrowed down to the following five finalists. Please read the entries and descriptions below, then VOTE once on your favorite word here: https://www.surveymonkey.de/r/W8ZP623. Polls are open until midnight (CET) December 27. The winner will be announced here on December 28.

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Kann KI Latein lernen?

Es gibt heute verblüffend gute Übersetzungsmachinen im Internet: Google Translate oder Deepl, um zwei der bekanntesten zu nennen, können viele Sprachen sehr verständlich in andere Sprachen übersetzen. Manchmal wird auch Latein als Sprache angeboten, da sind die Resultate aber sehr dürftig. Dabei wäre es für alle, die kein Latein lesen können, oder auch für Wissenschaflter, die sich auf den Inhalt konzentrieren wollen und nicht erst mühsam den Text übersetzen wollen, so praktisch, wenn eine Maschine dies erledigen könnte. Nun weiss man nie, was die Zukunft bringt, und ich bin sicher keine Expertin in diesem Gebiet, aber vermutlich verhindern drei wichtige Punkte, dass KI gut Latein lernen kann:

  1. das Korpus ist zu klein
  2. das Korpus ist zu divers
  3. die Überlieferung ist zu lückenhaft.

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