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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Sometimes, the existing phrase is *le mot juste*
You could Anglicize it all, of course. Most of English is. You used the term “origin” in your question – that comes from the Latin “oriri”. It just so happens that “alma mater” or “cum laude” are Latin phrases copied wholesale, while the individual terms never caught on. Happens all the time. When you RSVP to a letter. When you tear an ACL. When I feel Schadenfreude over that torn ACL.
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