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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The modern university system was developed by the Catholic Church in Europe to educate clergy. At that time, Latin was the official language of the church and also the lingua franca of learned people in Europe. These universities focused heavily on classical texts both Roman and Greek. So Latin (and some Greek) permeated all aspects of the university system and some of those words have stuck around out of tradition. It’s only been in the last century that the expectation has disappeared that a university educated person would have an education in Greek and Latin.
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