lacrimae rerum

Meaning

Noun

• The “tears of things”; the inherent tragedy of existence.

Origin

• An allusion to Virgil’s Aeneid (29–19 BC), book I, line 462; Latin: lacrimae (“tears”, the nominative plural form of lacrima, “tear”) + rērum (“of things”, the genitive plural form of rēs, “thing”) = “tears of things”.