Over the centuries, certain Latin phrases have been used widely enough in English to get included in the dictionary. This list contains some of our favorites.
What It Means:
"love conquers all things"
Where It Comes From:
Shortly before the start of the first millennium, the Roman poet Virgil wrote "love conquers all things; let us too surrender to Love."
The phrase and the concept (in Latin and in English) caught on: a character in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written in the late 1300s, wore a brooch engraved "Amor Vincit Omnia"; Caravaggio used the phrase as the title of his painting of Cupid in the early seventeenth century; the twentieth century poet Edgar Bowers reinterpreted the phrase all over again in the poem with that title.
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