mental_floss Blog » 10 Latin Phrases You Pretend to Understand

mental_floss Blog » 10 Latin Phrases You Pretend to Understand: "5. E Pluribus Unum
(EE PLUR-uh-buhs OOH-nuhm): “Out of many, one”Less unique than it sounds, America’s original national motto, e pluribus unum, was plagiarized from an ancient recipe for salad dressing. In the 18th century, haughty intellectuals were fond of this phrase. It was the kind of thing gentlemen’s magazines would use to describe their year-end editions. But the term made its first appearance in Virgil’s poem “Moretum” to describe salad dressing. The ingredients, he wrote, would surrender their individual aesthetic when mixed with others to form one unique, homogenous, harmonious, and tasty concoction. As a slogan, it really nailed that whole cultural melting pot thing we were going for. And while it continues to appear on U.S. coins, “In God We Trust” came along later (officially in 1956) to share the motto spotlight."