Home › Glossary › Letter A

ab uno disce omnes

Latin Phrases
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

From one, learn all; a single example is sufficient to understand the whole.

Detailed Definition
Ab uno disce omnes, drawn from Virgil's Aeneid, asserts that one representative instance reveals universal truth. In poetry, it underpins the use of the particular image or anecdote to illuminate the general human condition. It is the principle behind synecdoche and the epiphanic moment in lyric verse, where a single carefully observed detail opens onto vast meaning, making the poem both intimate and universal in its reach.
Example
Example in poetry:
Virgil uses the phrase in the Aeneid when the treachery of Sinon reveals the nature of all Greeks — ab uno disce omnes — one man's deceit stands for a whole people's character; A lyric poet presenting a single ruined garden as an emblem of civilizational decline is practicing ab uno disce omnes — the one standing for all; Hopkins's "Pied Beauty" operates on this principle — a catalogue of particular beautiful things instructs us in the nature of all beauty through selected examples; William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" opens with the most famous ab uno disce omnes in English poetry — seeing the world in a grain of sand; Elizabeth Bishop's close observation of a fish in "The Fish" teaches everything about dignity, endurance, and the ethics of looking through one carefully rendered creature
Additional Notes
Ab uno disce omnes is taken from Virgil's Aeneid (Book II, line 65), where it refers to Sinon, whose treachery is taken as representative of all Greeks. The phrase encapsulates the principle of synecdoche — the rhetorical figure by which a part stands for the whole — which is one of the most fundamental operations in lyric poetry. Students should note that while the phrase validates the use of a single example to represent a universal truth, it also carries a warning: the example must be genuinely representative, not merely convenient. False generalization from a single instance is a logical fallacy; genuine synecdoche requires the careful selection of a detail so central and essential that it truly does illuminate the whole. The related rhetorical figures of metonymy and pars pro toto are worth studying alongside this phrase.
Also Known As
from one learn all ex uno disce omnes ab uno disce omnibus
Skip to main content