Idiom
in vino veritas
Literary Roman origin
Meaning
People say what they actually think once they have had a drink.
Examples
“He told me what he really thought after the third glass. In vino veritas.”
“The dinner was pleasant until in vino veritas took over and the two of them started on the inheritance again.”
“In vino veritas is usually offered as an excuse, though it works better as a caution: the wine does not invent the opinion, it only removes the judgement that had been keeping it quiet.”
Examples
simple
“He told me what he really thought after the third glass. In vino veritas.”
contextual
“The dinner was pleasant until in vino veritas took over and the two of them started on the inheritance again.”
complex
“In vino veritas is usually offered as an excuse, though it works better as a caution: the wine does not invent the opinion, it only removes the judgement that had been keeping it quiet.”
Origin
The observation is older than Rome. The Greek poet Alcaeus has a version of it in the sixth century BC, and it was already a commonplace by the time Latin picked it up.
Pliny the Elder records the Roman form in his Natural History, in a long and disapproving section on wine: it is commonly said, he writes, that truth is now attributed to wine. His surrounding argument is that drink loosens what people had good reason to keep shut, and that the results are rarely improvements.
In vino veritas survives in English as a half-joke and a half-warning, usually deployed the morning after somebody said the thing everyone had been carefully not saying.
Stories
The Poets' Latin · See all Roman origin
Horace, Virgil and Cicero, still quoted in the original.
carpe diem — Seize the day — make use of today rather than counting on tomorrow.
tempus fugit — Time flies — said when far more of it has gone than you expected.
memento mori — A reminder that you are going to die, and that this should change how you spend the time.
festina lente — Make haste slowly — move quickly, but never faster than you can do it properly.
to err is human — Making mistakes is part of being a person, so a mistake alone is not a scandal.
homo homini lupus — Man is a wolf to man — people are dangerous to each other.
- Level
- C2 · Proficiency
- Updated