What Lorem Ipsum Means
Lorem ipsum is not a language and it does not translate cleanly, because it is scrambled Latin: a printer in the 1500s cut up a sentence from Cicero and reset the pieces as filler. The words that survive do have senses, and the table below gives them phrase by phrase, along with the standard 69 word passage and the section of Cicero it was cut from. The generator at the top of the page is set to one paragraph beginning with the traditional opening, so you can copy the real thing straight away.
Every paragraph is composed fresh from the Latin of Cicero’s De Finibus, the passage this placeholder was corrupted from in the 1500s. Looping one stock paragraph would hide the wrapping and line-length problems placeholder text exists to reveal.
The Cicero sentence lorem ipsum was cut from, phrase by phrase
The phrases and their senses are the tool's own gloss of Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum, 45 BC, sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33. The sentence reads: 'Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit.' The standard specimen passage, 69 words in full, is: 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.
| Latin | What it means |
|---|---|
| dolorem ipsum | pain itself. Cut after the first two letters, this is the lorem ipsum the placeholder is named for. |
| neque porro quisquam est, qui | nor, further, is there anyone who |
| quia dolor sit amet | because it is pain |
| consectetur | pursues it, or goes after it |
| adipisci velit | would want to obtain it |
| dolor sit amet | it is pain. Three of the five words in the placeholder's famous opening, still in their original order. |
Common questions
- Does lorem ipsum actually mean anything?
- Not as a whole. It is deliberately near-meaningless, which is the point: placeholder text has to look like language without being readable, so nobody starts editing the copy when they were asked to judge the layout. Individual words are real Latin and some phrases still parse, but the passage as a whole was assembled by cutting and reshuffling, and it has no argument, no grammar across sentences and no translation.
- What does 'lorem ipsum dolor sit amet' mean?
- Roughly 'pain itself, which is pain'. It is the middle of a longer sentence in Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum, 45 BC, sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33: 'Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit.' The word lorem is not a Latin word at all. It is what was left of dolorem, meaning pain, once the printer's cut removed the first two letters. The table below takes the sentence apart phrase by phrase.
- Where does lorem ipsum come from?
- From De finibus bonorum et malorum, Cicero's treatise on the ends of good and evil, written in 45 BC. The passage where the placeholder starts is an argument that nobody wants pain for its own sake. The specimen block everyone quotes today was set by Letraset in the 1960s for its dry-transfer lettering sheets and spread from there into desktop publishing software.
- Is the standard passage always the same?
- The specimen block is: 69 words, four sentences, printed in full in the note under the table. What differs is what tools do after it. This generator composes every paragraph fresh from the same Latin vocabulary rather than repeating one block, because identical paragraphs hide the wrapping and line-length problems placeholder text exists to reveal. Turn the opening switch off if you want text that does not start with the familiar words.
- Why use Latin rather than English filler?
- Because unfamiliarity is the feature. English filler gets read, and a stakeholder who reads the filler starts arguing with it. Scrambled Latin has roughly the letter frequencies and word lengths of European prose, so a page set in it looks like a real page while telling you nothing, and everyone in the room knows to look at the shape instead of the sentences.
- Can I copy the standard passage from this page?
- Yes, the full block is in the note under the table. The generator above is separate: it produces as much fresh placeholder text as your layout needs, in paragraphs, sentences, single words or list items, as plain text or wrapped in HTML tags, and it runs in your browser so nothing is sent anywhere.
The text is generated from the classical Lorem Ipsum corpus and is deliberately meaningless. It is placeholder copy, not Latin that translates. Word, sentence and paragraph counts are exact.