Favete linguis!

"Favete linguis!" is a Latin phrase, which means "facilitate [the ritual acts] with your tongues” ("tongues" as the organ of speech). In other words, "hold your tongue" or "facilitate the ritual acts by being silent".

The phrase is used by Cicero,^[1] Ovid,^[2] Horace, Pliny the Elder and Seneca.

Northrop Frye used the term in reference to the way that the philosophy of "new criticism" proscribes a limitation on the use of interdisciplinary criticism, suggesting that, for those who wish to dabble with a text by using tools from outside the literary tradition (i.e. using the critical techniques of other artistic disciplines on literature), they would do well to 'hold their tongues.'^{[citation needed]}

Origin

'Favour me with your tongues'. During official ritual acts a herald ordered the others to be silent by saying this phrase. It was done in order to avert an interruption by a careless, maybe also an ominous, word.^{[citation needed]}

Examples

• Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC–43 BC), De divinatione (2, 83)
• Horace (65 BC – 8 BC), Carmina (3, 1, 2)
• Ovid (43 BC – AD 17/18), Fasti (2, 654)
• Seneca (4 BC – AD 65), De vita beata (26, 7)
• Pliny the Elder (AD 23 – AD 79), Naturalis historia (28, 3)
• Northrop Frye (1919-91), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (82)