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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My understanding is that a complete education back in the day included studying “The Classics”, which included learning Ancient Greek and Latin. So anyone with that type of education would understand terms in those languages just as a matter of course. Education has changed substantially since those days, but the terms persist as terms those who are educated would know. They’re not studying the classics in those languages so much anymore, it’s just that those terms have stuck around through persistent usage.
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