# nota bene

idiom · CEFR C2 · Academic

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/nota-bene
Updated: 2026-08-03

## Meaning

Note well — pointing the reader at something they must not skip.

## Examples

- N.B. the office is closed on Friday.
- Nota bene: applications received after noon will not be considered, whatever the postmark says.
- The terms ran to nine pages and the only thing that mattered sat behind a nota bene on page seven, which is a defensible way to publish a condition and a poor way to communicate one.

## Origin

Nota bene is an instruction, not a description: note well, mark this. Notare is the Latin verb behind English note, notice and notorious, and bene supplies the bene- of benefit and benevolent. The phrase belongs to the margins of manuscripts. Scribes and readers used a small set of Latin tags to flag passages — nota bene for something important, sic for something surviving an error, vide for a cross-reference — and printers carried them into books. The abbreviation N.B. is one of the last of that system still in ordinary use. English uses it in writing rather than speech, and it has a faintly severe tone: an N.B. is what you attach to the condition, the deadline, or the exception that the reader is otherwise going to miss and later claim they were never told about.

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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.