Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

the high school i attended for freshman and sophomore year was near Princeton, NJ, and was founded in 1810.

they required you to take a year of Latin in order to sign up for any future romance language classes.

i don`t really remember a single word of the Latin from that year of "studies," truth be told, but i do remember that there were about eight of us freshman sitting around a heavy wooden table in a 100-year-old classroom, slate green chalk boards on three walls, and our very elderly teacher--so ancient that he seemed to have been one of the first hires at the school in 1810. What was particularly memorable about him was his serious narcolepsy problem. he`d be in the middle of "instructing," and then...    nothing...   eyes would close...    just sitting there in his chair at the table. his head would tip a little to one side.

needless to say, as that semester wore on, we got more and more bold changing things around in the room while he was out cold. it was somewhat like musical chairs - you never knew when he`d wake up and mayybe catch you setting a chair in the center of the table to confound him upon waking up or maybe jumping out the window and running around the lawn twice before jumping back in the window in anticipation of him rousing.

in any event, it was at that very school that i did learn one Latin phrase - not in the narcoleptic Latin class but at a school-wide address when the headmaster, standing at a podium in the school cathedral, translated the Latin saying on our school`s crest:

first he said it in Latin with affect: Virtus Semper Viridis

then came the English translation: Excellence Always Growing

being the impressionable little kid i was, the phrase stuck with me for some reason. The idea that excellence was not something you achieve but something you strive for and nurture through all your days was brought into focus at that moment in that phrase. It has ever since been a favorite Latin expression of mine.

Wondering if any of you have your own Latin expressions you call "favorite"...

(Note: "Virtus," upon further research i just did online can also mean, "manliness, character, worth, courage." substitute as you deem appropriate!)


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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation

Te Amo.

(not you Rich. To you it would be more like "Te amo, man!")

I too decided, on my own, that taking two years of Latin in 9th & 10th grade would be a good idea. I never took another language class but I do believe that my English vocabulary has been enhanced with the foundational Latin "studies" of my youth. And while traveling to Spanish, French & Italian (later this year for our official honeymoon) speaking countries I do tend to pick up the language fairly quickly.

And while I have no personal military background, I am also a big fan of Semper Fi.

"Memento mori" which, (very very loosely) is like "You`re a mere mortal".

Which, I take 2 ways - one, quit being hard on myself because I`m not a superhero, and two, I should make the most of it because I only have one life.

picking up on your last reason why, nikole, in other words, carpe diem?


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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation

I can`t resist weighing in on this thread.

--- Illegitimis nil carborundum

cookiemonster, sounds like harry potter to me...

how about a translation?!

otherwise it`s just kind of ... "lorum ipsum", you might say


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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation

"Omnia causa fiunt"

all things happen for a reason

It means "don`t let the b******* grind you down" but it`s really a bit of pigeon Latin. I also like:

Veni, Vidi, Vici

jeff (my bro) and i used to own / operate a record label for jazz artists called "veni, vidi, vici." love that one, too. 

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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation

Which, helping CM out, means "I came, I saw, I conquered".