annus mirabilis
noun
Did you know?
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
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
The year 1982 isn’t considered a film annus mirabilis, the way, say, 1939 is.
—Mark Feeney, BostonGlobe.com, 27 July 2022
She was first elected to Parliament in 1964—an annus mirabilis for all things progressive—and spent much of the next 15 years on the front bench.
—The Economist, 15 Apr. 2021
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'annus mirabilis.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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 18 Apr. 2024.
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