Schlagwort-Archive: word of the year

LATIN WORD OF THE YEAR 2024 – VOX ANNI MMXXIV

And the 2024 Latin Word of the Year is . . . RETOTATOTOTATO

Image from Päll 2004

This year’s winner––and by a very wide margin (60% of the vote)––is arguably not a word at all, but a sequence of syllables imitating a musical fanfare. The letters were scratched into the wall of a house in Pompeii shortly before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE and have sometimes been mistaken for a magical formula. But, as Janika Päll has argued, the presence of Greek musical notes above the letters makes a musical interpretation likely. In fact, most of the syllables correspond to Greek vocables (TO TE TA) that represent musical pitches according to an ancient solmization system, a bit like the familiar “do re mi” (discussed by Annie Bélis and Armand D’Angour). A similar sequence in Greek appears on a 5th-century BCE clay thigh-guard next to a trumpet-playing Amazon: totē totote (Pöhlmann and West, Documents in Ancient Greek Music, nr. 1; listen to one rendition). Hence the association of our Latin “word” with a trumpet or wind instrument. Yet the syllable re, if it has been identified correctly, does not have a known pitch value. So maybe the “word” is something between an onomatopoeic coinage such as Ennius’s taratantara and a precise melodic transcription.

A special mention goes to the runner-up, revaleo “be well again”, with about 18.5% of the vote.

With a big Latin fanfare we wish all our readers a good start to 2025, and we thank all the participants who voted in and shared this contest!

This year we have to add an important correction––retroactim, so to speak––noticed by Mark Thakkar: the word reteiaclor is in fact already in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, so it should not have been included among the finalists. An attractive alternative etymology for this word from rete-iac(u)lor (rather than retiaculum) has also been mentioned by Michael Weiss.

Previous Latin Words of the Year can be found here. 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 2025 TLL Latin Lexicography Summer School.

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

 

Latin Word of the Year 2023

The vote for Latin Word of the Year 2023 is now closed. The results can be found here.

After last year’s inaugural edition of the Vox Anni contest, in which the tiny rescellula rode a giant wave of popular support to victory, the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae is thrilled to invite you to vote on the Latin Word of the Year 2023.

You can cast your vote by December 10.

This year’s vote coincides with some very happy news: the TLL’s funding from the German Akademienunion has been successfully renewed. As a result, the project will be able to continue its century-old mission to become the most accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date dictionary of ancient Latin.

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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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