The word “antibiotic”—a Latinate term meaning “life-negating”—suggests a misleading confidence about how these chemicals work in nature.

Virgil’s decorous Latin gets translated into a language which calls for eloquent Latinate polysyllables: the Sibyl flings the guard-dog Cerberus “a dumpling of soporific honey”.

Gripers flinch from Latinate vocabulary in the mouths of lesser white-collar workers and parvenus in general: to reside, apprise, desist, terminate and so on.