People only just realising what ‘RIP’ stands for

Many everyday expressions come from older languages, and some common phrases we still use today don’t actually mean what people assume. Teacher and Instagram creator Laurie Knox often posts linguistic trivia that tends to surprise his audience.

In one video, he began with some familiar terms: ‘AM’ comes from the Latin ante meridiem, meaning ‘before noon’, while ‘PM’ comes from post meridiem, meaning ‘after noon’. He also explained that ‘et cetera’, or ‘etc’, translates to ‘and so on’, and that ‘MO’ refers to modus operandi, the way someone typically carries out a task.

Then he turned to ‘RIP’, which most people believe stands for ‘rest in peace’. But that isn’t quite accurate.

Knox explained that when the letters first appeared on English tombstones, they were actually an abbreviation of the Latin phrase requiescat in pace, which does mean ‘rest in peace’, but the initials come from Latin rather than English.

Because of this, the English phrase only appears to match the abbreviation by coincidence—though considering how many English words have Latin roots, it may not be much of a coincidence at all.

Merriam-Webster even lists RIP as a Latin expression, pronounced “reh-kwee-es-kaht in pah-chay”. Many viewers admitted they’d never known this, while others joked about alternative meanings.

Interestingly, fans of the Assassin’s Creed video games pointed out they already recognized the Latin phrase from the series. Some also noted that the more precise translation is “may he rest in peace,” but the common meaning remains essentially the same.