Common Latin Phrases: A Guide for the Ambitious Academic

Everyone strives to be more intelligent. If you don't, stop reading right now, this guide will only make your goal of complete ignorance more difficult to achieve. Stick to your guns, no one likes a quitter. For those of you who do wish to gain a touch more knowledge, keep reading. I would like to touch base with some old latin phrases and see how they're doing, what they've been up to for the last 26 centuries, find out why they've got the legal community wrapped around their gnarly little Roman fingers. Mostly it's so that laymen, like us, can find out what those phrases we've been throwing out during junior high debate tournaments over the years actually mean.

Bona fide: "in good faith"
According to my research (insert flashback of watching The Magic Schoolbus), this phrase is used in contemporary English as a way of asking for someone's credentials, as in "show me your bona fides." Honestly, that sounds like an invitation for exhibitionism, and not the good kind. I think you'll find its more common usage is as a qualification of truth. As in, "Oprah Winfrey is a bona fide rich person", or "Stephen Hawking is a bona fide cripple."

De facto: "by the fact"
This has been deemed synonymous with such other phrases as "for all intents and purposes" or "in fact", but it really means that it is something that is true in practice but not officially established in law. Until the "bro code" was published, it was de facto that you never leave a high five or a fist bump hanging when it is offered to you. Common sense, really. Personally, I think it sounds like a cool Italian last name but, instead, it would be spelled D'Facto. I'm picturing someone in the mafia who eats ravioli out of bullet ridden human skulls.

Pro bono: "for the good"
Boy, has this one been distorted over the years. No longer does it mean "for the good". Now it means "for free". I guess, if you're a nitpicker and you don't enjoy the benefit and general happiness that can result from having friends, you might argue that they can be interpreted as the same thing. I think that is a very materialistic approach to the philosophy, and I will proceed to assume that you are a lawyer. My condolences.

Ad nauseum: "to (the point of) nausea"
While most commonly used as an almost metaphorical hyperbole to describe menial events that have been continuing to the point of nausea, I would prefer to use it in it's more literal sense. Bring it back to it's roots. Such as, "I ate jager bomb jello shots ad nauseum" or "I rode the carousel with my screaming nephew while inhaling a combination of second-hand cigarette smoke and pink cotton candy ad nauseum."

Quid pro quo: "this for that"
Otherwise known among circles of cigar-smoking poker-playing clone husbands of the 1960's as "tit for tat". Translated into a dialect of English most commonly found sung by Elvis Presley's co-stars it becomes "If you'll scratch my back/Then I'll scratch your back/Like two peas in a pack/Let's get rid of our itch together." Politicians have also been found to use this phrase as a strange occupational slang for "bribery".



Deus ex machina: "god out of the machine"
A plot device where a seemingly impossible problem or situation is miraculously solved by some contrived intervention of a new person, force, or object.
*Insert crass and insensitive Bible reference here*

Non sequitur: "it does not follow"
To me, rather than represent a literary device that makes a passage or event humorous due to it's apparent lack of relevance to what came before it, I think it should be yelled during boot camp at every military training base on the continent. Imagine the moral of a group of young soldiers being told they are marching incorrectly by having a lovely latin word shouted at them instead of a sentence that might rhyme with "Gut the shmuck up and get your feet moving, you smother plucking buns of fishes!"

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis