annus mirabilis
noun
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To British poet John Dryden, the “year of wonders” was 1666. That was the year of a great British naval victory over the Dutch, as well as the date of the great London fire. When he titled his 1667 poetic review of 1666 and its events Annus Mirabilis, Dryden became one of the first writers to use that Latinate phrase in an otherwise English context. Annus mirabilis is a direct translation from New Latin, the form of Latin that has been used since the end of the medieval period especially in scientific descriptions and classification. The phrase is not particularly common, but it is used by writers and historians to denote any notably remarkable year.
Examples of annus mirabilis in a Sentence
Sheon Han, WIRED, 23 Sep. 2024
But, through the help and support of the people around him and hard work on the course, DeChambeau’s 2024 has something of a annus mirabilis.
—Ben Morse, CNN, 17 June 2024
It was eventually disproved—thanks to the famous Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 and Albert Einstein's development of special relativity and his paper on the photoelectric effect in 1905 (his annus mirabilis).
—Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 4 Feb. 2023
Einstein shot to fame within the scientific community in 1905, a year christened as his annus mirabilis.
—Brian Greene, Scientific American, 1 Sep. 2015
The year is 1973 — the same horror-cinema annus mirabilis of The Wicker Man and Don’t Look Now, for those of you playing along at home.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 30 Mar. 2023
How much fondness does history display for the annus mirabilis that doesn’t end with a championship parade?
—Christopher L. Gasper, BostonGlobe.com, 6 Mar. 2023
Cahiers du cinéma who were intent upon becoming filmmakers: Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Éric Rohmer—and the year of its inception as 1959, which Monaco calls its annus mirabilis, when most of his subjects made their first features.
—James Quandt, The New York Review of Books, 8 June 2022
There are amazing accounts of scientists like Ben Franklin, in Paris, trying to understand the bizarre phenomena seen in the ‘annus mirabilis’ of 1783 across Europe.
—Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 19 Jan. 2015
Dictionary Entries Near annus mirabilis
Cite this Entry
“Annus mirabilis.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/annus%20mirabilis. Accessed 23 Nov. 2024.
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