Among the Latin words that have been adopted wholly into English is the useful phrase annus horribilis, “horrible year.” As much as it sounds like a callback to the writings of Seneca or Cato the Elder, it appears to be a relatively recent coinage, at least as a set phrase, and it has a remarkably British lineage.
Etymologists currently date the phrase back to the early 1890s, when it appeared in an Anglican publication to describe the year 1870. That’s the year the First Ecumenical Council of the Vatican defined the dogma of papal infallibility — that belief that the pope is incapable of error when speaking ex cathedra.
Annus horribilis is modeled after the Latin phrase annus mirabilis, “a year of miracles” or “a wondrous year.” This phrase spilled from the pen of seventeenth-century British poet John Dryden. Written in 1666 and published the following year, “Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666” is his poem commemorating both the British fleet’s conquest of the Dutch navy and the Great Fire of London, which tore through that part of the city within the old Roman walls and is believed to have obliterated 87 percent of the homes of its residents.
I doubt those Londoners would have chosen mirabilis to describe that particular year.
It might have been fire that brought Dryden’s “Annus Mirabilis” — and its evil opposite annus horribilis — to Queen Elizabeth II’s mind in November 1992, when, in an address marking the fortieth anniversary of her ascension to queendom, she said:
Nineteen ninety-two is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘annus horribilis.’ I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so.
Just four days before that speech, a fire had broken out at Windsor Castle, destroying some historic sections.
That was also the year that Prince Andrew and Duchess Sarah Ferguson separated, The Daily Mirror published photos of the topless Duchess in an intimate situation with an American financier, Princess Anne divorced, and the book Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words revealed to the world that Prince Charles was having an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Horribilis indeed.
Because the phrase has been adopted into English, you need not italicize it as a foreign word. Also, the plural of annus horribilis is anni horribiles, but let us hope that we never have reason to use it.
And a final word of warning: If your spell-checker flags annus as having one too many n’s, don’t believe it.