What Does Lorem Ipsum Mean? Translation, Origin and Full Text

Lorem ipsum is scrambled Latin. It is taken from a passage of Cicero's philosophical work De finibus bonorum et malorum (45 BC), with words cut, shuffled and altered so that it no longer means anything. The "language" is best described as pseudo-Latin: most words are real Latin or fragments of it, but the sentences have no grammar.

The standard lorem ipsum passage

This is the paragraph most generators and design tools use (it is 445 characters, 69 words):

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum translated to English

There is no faithful translation because the text was deliberately broken. The closest you can get is to match each fragment to the Cicero sentence it came from and translate that. The English below follows H. Rackham's 1914 Loeb Classical Library translation.

Put back together, the source is an argument about pleasure and pain: nobody seeks pain for its own sake, but people sometimes accept toil and pain to gain a greater pleasure.

The original Latin: Cicero, De finibus 1.10.32

Section 1.10.32 as it is commonly quoted (wording varies slightly between editions):

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

English translation (H. Rackham, 1914)

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

Where did lorem ipsum come from?

The link to Cicero was identified by Latin scholar Richard McClintock, who traced the rare word "consectetur" back to De finibus. The often-repeated claim that a printer scrambled the text in the 1500s is not well documented. The earliest uses that can be verified are from the 20th century: lorem ipsum appeared on Letraset dry-transfer type sheets in the 1960s and later shipped as sample text in desktop publishing software such as Aldus PageMaker, which made it standard in design work.

One popular explanation for why it starts with "Lorem" rather than "Dolorem" is that it was copied from a page that began mid-word, cutting "do-" from "dolorem". Whatever the exact route, the result is text with the rhythm and letter mix of Latin prose and none of the meaning.

Is lorem ipsum a real language?

No. It is built from Latin, so it looks like Latin, and many single words are real (dolor means pain, ipsum means itself, magna means great). But words like lorem, adipiscing, elit and cillum are not Latin, and the sentences do not follow Latin grammar. A Latin reader sees a list of disconnected words. Translators that output fluent English for it are guessing.

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