summa cum laude
5
9.1
- idiom
- /ˈsʌmə kʌm ˈlaʊdi/
- Formal
:
summa cum laude
- "I see you are graduating summa cum laude."
- graduated summa cum laude
I graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and was able to graduate with honors from UCLA undergrad.
- I graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and was able to graduate with honors from UCLA undergrad.
Examples
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John is a summa cum laude graduate of Kennesaw State.
Blog text (29) -
You would have never known that you graduated summa cum laude.
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I was graduated summa cum laude.
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I graduated summa cum laude.
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After graduating summa cum laude from her college, she joined Teach for America, serving three years in a minority school in Southern California.
Academic text (2004) -
He graduated summa cum laude from Texas University.
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Leslie attended Bryan Station High School and graduated from the University of Kentucky summa cum laude.
Fiction book (1998) -
How could this possibly be happening to Frank Xavier Murphy, summa cum laude graduate of UCLA Medical School?
Fiction book (2001) -
Prior to her writing career, Kerry Anne graduated summa cum laude from Adelphi University in NY, earning a master's degree in elementary education.
Blog text (18) -
She graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University, achieving the highest honors in her class.
Synonyms
1
7.7
A top university degree given in Britain
How Honored
Surface Forms
Morphology
summa + cum + laude
This is a fixed Latin academic formula rather than a compositional English phrase; the constituents ('summa', 'cum', 'laude') are not productive English words a B1 learner will know and do not transparently combine to yield 'with the highest academic distinction'. Although many languages borrow the exact Latin phrase in academic contexts, that familiarity is memorized borrowing rather than derivation from constituent meanings, so the expression is not predictable for learners.
Etymology
Summa cum laude comes from old university diplomas written in Latin. It literally means 'with highest praise' because summa means 'highest', cum means 'with', and laude means 'praise'. So today we use summa cum laude to show someone graduated 'with the highest academic distinction'.