Lore

Lorem Ipsum Origins

I’ve used it countless times myself, and even tried plugging the phrase into Google Translate for enlightenment, but I always wondered what “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…” meant. Stumbled across this article today that sheds a bit of light on the matter. Turns out it was taken from a classic text written by the great Cicero.

Lorem ipsum was part of a passage from Cicero, specifically De finibus bonorum et malorum, a treatise on the theory of ethics written in 45 BC. The original reads, Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit . . . (“There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain …”).

Read up more about the origins and how it was used for metal typesetting in the 1500s and sliced up from transparencies in the 1960s via the Straight Dope.