Latin and Greek are the root of several modern languages. When Roman empire fell around the fifth century, its numerous tongues mutated into different languages, some of which are known as the Romance Languages (e.g., Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, among others). English, although is not counted among Romance languages, its vocabulary reflects a sizeable influence of the Latin. Several English words that are in common parlance right now are derivatives from Latin. 

While some of the Latin words that made it into English lost their original graphic and phonetic make-up, others retain their original format and are used verbatim (yes, Latin word) in English. Most of these Latin phrases are used in arcane and technical jargons such as the legalese and academic language.

In today’s post, I share with you this collection of popular phrases used in academic language.  Whether you are writing a research paper, a literature review, or a scholarly thesis, Latin phrases can cast a professional flair on your academic style and enrich the lexicon of your language.

There are several Latin phrases used in Academic language but I only selected few examples. These are phrases I have repeatedly comes across in my academic readings and ones which, consequently, I came to integrate in my scholarly writings. The definitions and examples used in the the chart below are taken from the following sources: Google dictionary, Wikipedia and Merriam Webster. 

For more resources on where to access Latin phraseology used currently in English, I recommend checking out the Latin Words and Phrases of Our Everyday Life, and Wikipedia’s list of Latin phrases and their English translation.


This post originally appeared in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning ( www.educatorstechnology.com ).