Ab
Ovo
ab-OH-voh
From the beginning
"Ab ovo usque ad mala."
That phrase translates as "from the egg to the apples," and it was
penned by the Roman poet Horace. He was alluding to the Roman tradition of
starting a meal with eggs and finishing it with apples. Horace also applied ab
ovo in an account of the Trojan War that begins with the mythical egg of Leda
from which Helen (whose beauty sparked the war) was born. In both cases, Horace
used ab ovo in its literal sense, "from the egg," but by the late
16th century it had been adapted to its modern English meaning of "from
the beginning," perhaps for the first time by Sir Philip Sidney in his An
Apology for Poetry: "If [the dramatic poets] wil represent an history,
they must not (as Horace saith) beginne Ab ouo: but they must come to the principall
poynt of that one action."
Ineffable
(in-EF-uh-buhl)
1. Incapable of being expressed:
indescribable. 2. Not to be expressed: taboo.
From Latin in- (not) + effari (to
speak out), from ex- (out) + Latin fari (to speak). Ultimately from the
Indo-European root bha- (to speak), which also gave us fable, fairy, fate,
fame, blame, confess, and infant (literally, one unable to speak), apophasis,
and confabulate.