Hi! I just had a random linguistic question. I was thinking of terms like “alma mater” and graduation designations like “cum laude” etc. and even in academic writing we commonly have phrases like “ad hominem” or “ad nauseum”. Why have these terms persisted in English societies, and where did integration of them with academia come from?
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Idk why it started, but we keep it around probably because it sounds more official. “Hes got myocarditis” sounds much more official than “He’s got heart muscle swelling”. “Spatularis Rubra” is a much more official sounding name for a species than “the flat one that’s red”.
If you want a field of science that uses plain English, look at astronomy. They have telescopes pretty much called “The big one” and “The really big one”. What do they call big stars that are red? Red giants. What do they call small stars that are white? White dwarves. If it pulses, its a pulsar. If its magnetic, its a magnetar. Found this weird black thing that stuff falls into? Black hole.
Not every field uses latin/Greek conventions.
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