A recent op-ed on a popular liberal site is entitled “SCOTUS Delenda Est.” Do you know what "delenda est” means? I didn't. First, I thought it might be Spanish because the est looked Spanish to me, but I couldn't figure out how delenda was Spanish. Finally, I looked up the phrase online and found that it means “must be destroyed” in Latin.
Then I wondered where the phrase came from. Was it a legal term like stare decisis? After checking a couple of law dictionaries, I still couldn't find delenda est. Then I consulted two books of Latin common phrases. Still no luck. I was ready to give up. As a last resort, I typed delenda est into the Kindle search bar of Mary Beard's book, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, and found this on page 212:
“Cato was the most vociferous enemy of Carthage, notoriously, tediously but ultimately persuasively ending every speech he made with the words ‘Carthage must be destroyed’ (‘Carthago delenda est', in the still familiar Latin phrase).” Emboldened by me.
First of all, I would never be able to write such a sentence with four -ly words so closely together: “...notoriously, tediously but ultimately persuasively...”! Secondly, I was thunderstruck by Beard's describing the Latin phrase as a still familiar one! Familiar to whom? Familiar to me, no! Thirdly, if SCOTUS is Carthago, why are they all smiling in the above photo?
The “SCOTUS Delenda Est” writer must have assumed that readers would have known the "familiar phrase” when writing the title. And familiar it must be if Mary Beard says so! Evidently, the phrase has been used by rock bands and in comics and speeches by present-day politicians. In fact, I discovered that an entire, surprisingly-long Wikipedia article exists about this Latin phrase all by itself in which Carthago delenda est is even parsed.
Little did I know.