Kilo Lingo

#857 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

namely, that is to say; of course

Examples

, .

He is after one thing, namely peace.

, .

There are two kinds, namely good and evil.

.

He supposes, of course, that this is true.

, , , .

Three are present, namely father, mother and son.

videret.

He came, obviously, in order to see us.

Videlicet is videre licet fused into one word, "one may see", and it does two quite different jobs. The common one is to introduce a specification: "namely, that is to say", pointing forward at the item that spells out what was just said in general terms.

The other is sarcastic. Dropped into a clause on its own it means "of course", "naturally", with the eyebrow raised, and the tone is the whole content. Scilicet, from scire licet, splits the same two ways, so context rather than word choice tells you which is meant. English abbreviated it to viz., where the z is not a letter at all but a medieval shorthand squiggle for the ending -et. The corpus spelling uidelicet is just u standing for v.

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Latin · Free printables

videlicet: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "videlicet" (namely, that is to say; of course): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

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This word is part of lesson 18.