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dinkum commented on the word E pluribus unum
WORD: E pluribus unum
DEFINITION:
' E pluribus unum — Latin for "Out of many, one" (alternatively translated as "One out of many" or "One from many") — is a phrase on the Seal of the United States, along with Annuit cœptis (Latin for "He approves (has approved) of the undertaking") and Novus ordo seclorum (Latin for "New Order of the Ages"), and adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782. Never codified by law, E pluribus unum was considered a de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H. J. Resolution 396), adopting "In God We Trust" as the official motto.
' Traditionally, the understood meaning of the phrase was that out of many states (or colonies) there would emerge a single nation. However, in recent years its meaning has come to suggest that out of many peoples, races, religions and ancestries has emerged a single people and nation—illustrating the concept of the melting pot.' -- Wikipedia
EXAMPLE:
' The motto of Dwayne Hoover's and Kilgore Trout's nation was this, which meant in a language nobody spoke anymore, Out of Many, One: "E pluribus unum."
' The vacant motto might not have mattered much, if it weren't for this: a lot of citizens were so ignored and cheated and insulted that they thought they might be in the wrong country, or even on the wrong planet, that some terrible mistake had been made. It might have comforted them some if their national anthem and their national motto had mentioned fairness or brotherhood or hope or happiness, had somehow welcomed them to the society and its real estate.
' If they studied their paper money for clues as to what their country was all about, they found, among a lot of other baroque trash, a picture of a truncated pyramid with a radiant eye on top of it.
' Not even the President of the United States knew what that was all about. It was as though the country were saying to its citizens, "In nonsense is strength." '
-- From Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 novel "Breakfast of Champions" -- Chapter 1 (pages 9 - 10).
August 24, 2013