{"id":453,"date":"2007-08-02T20:42:04","date_gmt":"2007-08-02T19:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/02\/duxes-and-testamurs\/"},"modified":"2007-08-02T20:42:04","modified_gmt":"2007-08-02T19:42:04","slug":"duxes-and-testamurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=453","title":{"rendered":"Duxes and testamurs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two words I came across recently that left me puzzled were\u00a0<strong>dux<\/strong> and <strong>testamur<\/strong>. After some investigation, I discovered that dux is the title given to the top academic student in a graduating class of a school, and that it&#8217;s used in Scotland, Australia, New Zealand and Iceland. I understand that the US equivalent is valedictorian. I don&#8217;t know if there&#8217;s an equivalent in England or Wales.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dux<\/strong> comes from the Latin word for leader, via the verb <em>ducere<\/em>, to lead, and is also the root of the English word duke, the French <em>duc<\/em>, the Italian <em>duce<\/em>, and the Venetian <em>doge<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>A <strong>testamur<\/strong> or testimonium\u00a0is\u00a0a certificate issued by a university to signify that a student has satisfied the requirements of a particular course and has graduated, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/my.unsw.edu.au\/student\/atoz\/Testamur.html\">this site<\/a>. It&#8217;s used mainly in Australia. Elsewhere I believe such documents are usually called diplomas.<\/p>\n<p>Testamur comes from the Latin <em>Ita testamur<\/em>, meaning &#8220;We testify\/certify&#8221; &#8211; the words used to begin such certificiates, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Diploma\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two words I came across recently that left me puzzled were\u00a0dux and testamur. After some investigation, I discovered that dux is the title given to the top academic student in a graduating class of a school, and that it&#8217;s used in Scotland, Australia, New Zealand and Iceland. I understand that the US equivalent is valedictorian. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}