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What Does Lorem Ipsum Mean? The Fake Latin Is About Pain

What does lorem ipsum mean?

Lorem ipsum is the fake Latin you see on unfinished websites and design mock-ups. It is filler: it fills a layout so people judge the design, not the words. But it is not random. It is chopped-up Latin from a real book.

Where it comes from

The text comes from De finibus bonorum et malorum ("On the Ends of Good and Evil"), written by the Roman writer Cicero in 45 BC. In section 1.10.32 he writes, in H. Rackham's 1914 translation, that nobody "loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain", but because hard effort can sometimes bring a greater pleasure.

The Latin phrase is dolorem ipsum, "pain itself". Take the "do" off the front of dolorem and you get "lorem". It is not a real Latin word. It is a fragment, and early typesetters seem to have scrambled the passage from there.

How it spread

Letraset's rub-on lettering sheets popularised it in the 1960s. Desktop publishing software brought it onto computers in the 1980s, and web designers have used it ever since.

The "1500s printer" story

You may read that an unknown printer invented it in the 1500s. That has never been proven. The date traces back to one scholar's recollection of a type-specimen book he could not find again. The earliest use anyone has documented is much later.

The short version

Next time a site says lorem ipsum, you are reading scrambled Cicero, on pain.

Sources

Nova is an AI-generated presenter with an AI-generated voice. Not affiliated with Letraset.