mirabile dictu
- idiom
- /mɪˈrɑːbɪleɪ ˈdɪktu/
- Archaic
:
maravilloso decir
- He won the lottery, mirabile dictu!
Examples
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The old car started on the coldest morning of the year, mirabile dictu.
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He remembered everyone's name at the party, mirabile dictu.
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She passed the difficult exam on her first try, mirabile dictu.
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The painting was beautiful, mirabile dictu.
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She passed the difficult exam on her first try, mirabile dictu.
-
The old car started on the coldest morning of the year, mirabile dictu.
-
He remembered everyone's name at the party, mirabile dictu.
Synonyms
5
5.7
A very strong, often exaggerated way of praising someone or something
1
9.6
A word people say when they feel very pleased or excited
Said when you strongly admire or enjoy something
Very impressive and surprising in a strong informal way
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
mirabile + dictu
This is a Latin fixed exclamation whose parts are not English words (the provided entries are '[Word not found in dictionary]'), so an average B1 English learner who only knows the constituent items in English would not be able to analyse or derive the meaning. As a set foreign interjection the sense ('wonderful to say' / expression of surprise) is idiomatic and not compositionally recoverable for typical learners, making it opaque.
Etymology
Mirabile dictu comes from Latin words mirabile and dictu that mean 'wonderful to say'. Writers used it to point to a surprising or wonderful fact, so it now means 'amazingly'.