# annus mirabilis

idiom · CEFR C2 · Literary

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/annus-mirabilis
Updated: 2026-08-03

## Meaning

A year of remarkable achievement or good fortune.

## Examples

- Nineteen sixty-six was his annus mirabilis.
- The label had an annus mirabilis in 1994, with three debut albums that all still sell.
- Biographers treat that year as her annus mirabilis, though the notebooks show the ideas had been accumulating for a decade and the year in question is mostly when she finally had time to write them down.

## Origin

Annus mirabilis is Latin for year of wonders, and it entered English as the title of a poem. John Dryden published Annus Mirabilis in 1667, about the year just past: 1666 had brought a naval war with the Dutch, the Great Fire of London and the last of the plague, and Dryden's argument was that England had survived a year of portents, which made the wonders a good sign rather than a bad one. Later use dropped the survival and kept the achievement. The phrase attached itself to Isaac Newton's 1666, in which he did foundational work on calculus, optics and gravitation while Cambridge was closed for the plague, and to Albert Einstein's 1905, in which he published four papers that separately reshaped physics. English now uses annus mirabilis for any year in which somebody's work or luck was extraordinary — and the deliberately contrasting annus horribilis for the other kind.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.