Latin Language
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50 free Latin Language trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Latin has had no native speakers for well over a thousand years, yet you use it every day. It hides in the abbreviations on your clock and at the end of your letters, in the mottoes on coins and coats of arms, in courtroom jargon, and in the scientific names of animals and dinosaurs. Even the word trivia is Latin. This quiz comes at the language from several directions. You will translate common Latin words and phrases into English, trace everyday English words back to their Roman roots, and match famous mottoes and quotations to the people and institutions behind them. A little grammar and history rounds it out, from the alphabet the Romans borrowed to the places where Latin is still in use. No Latin lessons are needed. The quiz suits word lovers, pub quiz regulars, students who are just starting the language and teachers who want a warm-up for class. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing why a word means what it does. Play online, or print the questions.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'trivia' goes back to the Latin 'trivium', a public place where three of what met?
Roads
Roads met at a trivium, from 'tri' (three) and 'via' (road). Because a crossroads was an open public place, the related word 'trivial' came to mean commonplace.
Q 02The English word 'muscle' comes from the Latin 'musculus', which literally means a little what?
Mouse
Mouse is the root: 'musculus' is the diminutive of 'mus', because a flexed biceps was thought to resemble one. The shellfish 'mussel' takes its name from the same Latin word.
Q 03Which tiny European state has bank cash machines that offer on-screen instructions in Latin?
Vatican City
Vatican City has them, at the Vatican Bank. The Holy See still issues most of its official documents with the authoritative version in Latin, while the city state itself legislates in Italian.
Q 04Which European carmaker's name is Latin for 'I roll', first registered in 1911 for ball bearings?
Volvo
Volvo is the first-person form of the Latin verb 'volvere', to roll. The bearing maker SKF registered the name in 1911, and the first car to carry it was built in Gothenburg in 1927.
Q 05The word 'salary' comes from 'salarium', a Roman allowance named in Latin after which commodity?
Salt
Salt, 'sal' in Latin, lies behind 'salarium'. The popular story that Roman legions were paid in it has no ancient support, but the same root did give English 'salad' and 'sauce'.
Q 06Canariae Insulae, the Latin name behind the Canary Islands, means the islands of which animals?
Dogs
Dogs gave the islands their Latin name: Pliny the Elder wrote of 'vast multitudes of dogs of very large size' there. The songbird was named after the islands, not the reverse.
Q 07The Latin motto of Hogwarts, 'Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus', warns never to do what to a sleeping dragon?
Tickle it
Tickle it is the thing to avoid: the motto means 'Never tickle a sleeping dragon'. Its last word comes from 'titillare', the Latin verb that also gave English 'titillate'.
Q 08The word 'bus' is short for 'omnibus', the Latin nickname of an 1820s French carriage service, meaning what?
For all
For all is what 'omnibus' means, the dative plural of 'omnis'. Citizens of Nantes gave the nickname to Stanislas Baudry's horse-drawn service, and he took the idea to Paris in 1828.
Q 09'Candidate' comes from the Latin 'candidatus', because Roman office-seekers wore togas of which colour?
White
White togas, brightened with chalk, marked out Romans campaigning for office, and 'candidatus' meant white-robed. The same root, 'candidus', gives English the word 'candid'.
Q 10Alexander Lenard's Latin translation of which children's classic spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list?
Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh became 'Winnie ille Pu' and sold 125,000 copies in the US. Lenard had to self-publish the first printing in 1958, because publishers doubted the book's potential.
Q 11What does 'E pluribus unum' mean, the Latin motto with thirteen letters on the Great Seal of the United States?
Out of many, one
Out of many, one suited a union of thirteen colonies, and the phrase has thirteen letters to match. 'In God We Trust' only became the official national motto in 1956.
Q 12Which Latin boast is Julius Caesar said to have sent to Rome after his swift defeat of Pharnaces II at Zela?
Veni, vidi, vici
Veni, vidi, vici means 'I came, I saw, I conquered', a report on a war that was over in days. Suetonius adds that Caesar displayed the three words as an inscription at his triumph.
Q 13'Citius, Altius, Fortius' is the Latin motto of which sporting event, borrowed by its founder from a Dominican priest?
Q 21What does 'anno Domini' mean, the Latin phrase behind the A.D. dating system devised by the monk Dionysius Exiguus?
In the year of the Lord
In the year of the Lord counts from the birth of Jesus as Dionysius reckoned it in 525. Reading A.D. as 'after death' would leave the years of Jesus's life outside both eras.
Q 22The abbreviation i.e., often mixed up with e.g., is short for a Latin phrase that means what?
That is
That is translates 'id est', and the abbreviation introduces a rephrasing of what was just said. Its lookalike e.g. stands for 'exempli gratia', for the sake of example.
Q 23What does 'post scriptum' mean, the Latin phrase behind the P.S. added below a letter's signature?
Written after
Olympic Games
Olympic Games founder Pierre de Coubertin took 'Faster, Higher, Stronger' from his friend Henri Didon. In 2021 the IOC added a fourth word, 'Communiter', meaning together.
Q 14Which French philosopher's first principle is known by the Latin sentence 'Cogito, ergo sum'?
René Descartes
René Descartes first wrote it in French, as 'je pense, donc je suis', in 1637 so that more people could read it. The Latin version, 'I think, therefore I am', appeared later.
Q 15Which playwright made the Latin line 'Et tu, Brute?' famous as the last words of the stabbed Julius Caesar?
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare gave the line to the dying dictator in Act 3 of his tragedy. Ancient writers report either silence or a Greek phrase meaning 'You too, child', never the Latin words.
Q 16Which Latin phrase did Elizabeth II use for 1992, a year of royal break-ups and a fire at Windsor Castle?
Annus horribilis
Annus horribilis, a horrible year, plays on the older 'annus mirabilis', a wonderful one. She used it in a speech at Guildhall four days after the castle caught fire.
Q 17Horace's 'carpe diem' is usually translated 'seize the day', but what does the Latin verb 'carpe' more literally mean?
Pluck
Pluck is the literal sense: Horace pictures gathering the day like ripe fruit. The full line in his Odes goes on to advise putting very little trust in tomorrow.
Q 18Which Latin phrase for a favour traded for a favour first described swapping one medicine for another?
Quid pro quo
Quid pro quo is Renaissance Latin for 'something for something'. English writers of the 1530s used it when one drug was substituted for another, whether by accident or by fraud.
Q 19What does 'alma mater', the Latin phrase graduates use for their old university, literally mean?
Nourishing mother
Nourishing mother was first a title for Roman goddesses such as Ceres and Cybele. The University of Bologna later took it into its motto, 'Alma Mater Studiorum'.
Q 20What does 'ante meridiem' mean, the Latin phrase shortened to a.m. on a 12-hour clock?
Before midday
Before midday is the meaning, built on 'meridies', the Latin for noon. Because noon is neither before nor after itself, strictly speaking neither a.m. nor p.m. applies to it.
Written after is the literal sense of 'post scriptum'. A further afterthought becomes a P.P.S., for 'post-post-scriptum', and the chain can in theory go on ad infinitum.
Q 24The abbreviation 'lb' for a pound of weight comes from which Latin word, also the name of a zodiac sign?
Libra
Libra, Latin for a pair of scales, was also a Roman unit of weight, and the phrase 'libra pondo' gave English both 'lb' and 'pound'. The £ sign is a stylised L for the same word.
Q 25What does 'curriculum vitae' literally mean, the Latin phrase that job applicants shorten to CV?
Course of life
Course of life uses 'curriculum' in its first sense of a running or a race, from 'currere', to run. The same Latin verb gives English 'current' and 'courier'.
Q 26Which day of the week did the Romans call 'dies Lunae', the Latin root of French lundi and Spanish lunes?
Monday
Monday is the Moon's day in both traditions. Germanic speakers translated the Latin name piece by piece instead of borrowing it, swapping in their own word for the Moon.
Q 27September to December keep Latin number names from an early Roman calendar said to begin in which month?
March
March opened the ten-month year that Romans credited to Romulus, so September really was the seventh month and December the tenth. Winter was at first just an unnamed gap between years.
Q 28What does 'sapiens' mean in Homo sapiens, the Latin name Carl Linnaeus gave the human species in 1758?
Wise
Wise is the usual translation, from the verb 'sapere', which also means to have a taste. That double sense is why food with no flavour is called 'insipid'.
Q 29What does 'rex' mean in Tyrannosaurus rex, the Latin half of the name Henry Fairfield Osborn chose in 1905?
King
King rounds off a name that reads 'tyrant lizard king'. The first two parts come from Greek, 'tyrannos' and 'sauros', so 'rex' is the only Latin in it.
Q 30The word 'vaccine' goes back to 'vacca', the Latin for which animal, thanks to Edward Jenner's smallpox work?
Cow
Cow is the root because Jenner used cowpox, 'variolae vaccinae', to protect people against smallpox. In 1881 Louis Pasteur proposed stretching the word to cover every such inoculation.