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"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur."  Lat.

Latin is a mysterious language. It's been effectively dead for one and a half thousand years, yet somehow, it is still being used, even omnipresent in popular culture. Maybe it's that distinct, laconic sound of it. Maybe it's the association with the greatest Vestigial Empire of the Western world. Maybe it's fact that it is still the official religious language of the Roman Catholic Church. Whatever the reason, Latin sounds awesome to most people. And that's enough of a reason to gratuitously stick it onto any work of fiction out there.

More charitably, coining a new word in Latin or Greek allows the creation of a legitimate-sounding new word with a subconscious link to its meaning, since new words trigger our minds to think about similar-sounding words we know already. "Wingardium Leviosa" might be gobbledegook in any language, but the similarity to the words "wing" and "levitate" connects it to flight rather well, without being as obvious as "Wingyup Airyfly".

There's also a significant tendency to mix Latin and Gratuitous Greek together. Someone who is unfamiliar with one or both could easily mistake one for the other just based on sound, which probably has to do with a great portion of Latin vocabulary being derived from Greek in the first place.

See also Canis Latinicus for when Latin-sounding language is used instead of proper Latin.

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Examples of gratuitous Latin in fiction:

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