ecce homo
- noun
- /ˈɛkˌkeɪ ˈhoʊmoʊ/
- Literature
:
ecce homo
- Social media erupted with memes when the local church's fresco became an unexpected ecce homo overnight.
Examples
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After the amateur's attempt, the gallery director called the painting an ecce homo and started a restoration inquiry.
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Conservationists warn homeowners not to attempt painting touch-ups that could produce a personal ecce homo.
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What an awful ecce homo!
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The church's ecce homo restoration was a total disaster.
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When the poorly repaired fresco was unveiled, it quickly became an infamous ecce homo that everyone talked about.
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After seeing the disastrous restoration of the artwork, the critics humorously referred to it as an ecce homo.
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The oversight in the restoration led to a laughable ecce homo that sparked a viral trend online.
Synonyms
A famous Spanish painting of Jesus Christ that became widely shared as a joke after a bad repair
How Bad
- Literature
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although the Latin constituents literally yield a phrase meaning 'behold the man', the contemporary informal use referring to a botched or comically poor restoration is a culturally specific, pragmatic extension tied to a famous viral incident and art-historical usage. This modern sense is not predictable from the literal parts and would be unknown to a B1 learner without prior exposure to the cultural reference.
Etymology
Ecce homo is also used to mean a 'botched' or comically bad art repair after a famous story from a small church in Spain, where an amateur tried to restore an old fresco of Christ and made the face look very different. People shared the picture online and the name ecce homo came to mean a badly done restoration.
