triumph

The word triumph comes to us from Latin, but its usual meaning in that language is not the one we commonly give to it in English. To the ancient Romans, a triumphus was a parade celebrating a great military victory. The victorious general would ride a chariot through the streets of Rome to the steps of the Senate, a slave standing beside him holding a crown of laurels over his head. The general’s army would follow, leading the defeated enemy commander, captured slaves, and great wagons of spoils from the victory. The day was a holiday, and the entire city would turn out to cheer, to feast, and to drink. Roman poets also used the word triumphus to refer to the victory itself, as did later prose writers in Imperial Rome. But this second sense was relatively rare in Latin, and the word usually referred only to the procession and accompanying celebrations.

But in medieval Anglo-Latin we see the sense of triumph meaning the victory itself, not just its celebration. Here is an example from Bede’s c. 731 Ecclesiastical History of the English People, in a hymn that uses victory in battle as a metaphor for virginity, 4.20, 398.

Multus in orbe uiget per sobria corda triumphus, sobrietatis amor multus in orbe uiget.

(Much triumph flourishes in the world through sober hearts; much love of sobriety flourishes in the world.)

But triumph was not borrowed into English during the pre-Conquest period. I know of one example of the word in an English text, but it an example of the Latin word appearing in an English text, not an anglicization of the Latin. That text is the translation of the history of the world written by Orosius, a late Roman historian. The translator uses triumphan—the Latin root with an Old English accusative suffix—and adds a lengthy note not contained in the Latin original on the meaning of the word, thus indicating that it was not familiar to his audience:

Þæt hy triumphan heton, þæt wæs þonne hy hwylc folc mid gefeohte ofercumen hæfdon, þonne wæs heora þeaw þæt sceoldon ealle hyra senatus cuman ongean hyra consulas æfter þæm gefeohte, syx mila from ðære byrig, mid crætwæne, mid golde & mid gimstanum gefrætwedum, and hi sceoldon bringan feowerfetes twa hwite. Þonne hi hamweard foran, þonne sceoldon hyra senatus ridan on crætwænum wiðæftan þam consulum, and þa menn beforan him dryfan gebundene þe þær gefangene wæron, ðæt heora mærþa sceoldon þe þrymlicran beon.

(They called that a triumph, that was when they had overcome a nation in battle, then it was their custom that all the senators should come out to meet their consuls after the battle, six miles from the city with a chariot adorned with gold and gemstones, and they should bring two white four-footed animals. Then as they went homeward, the senators would ride in chariots behind the consuls and the men who had been captured would be driven bound before them, so that their glory should be more magnificent.)

Triumph really makes its English appearance in the late fourteenth century, when it is used both to mean a victory celebration and the victory iteself. Geoffrey Chaucer uses the word in his poem Anelida and Arcite, written c. 1375, which opens with a description of a triumph given for Theseus following his conquest of the Scythians. Yes, the context is Athenian, not Roman, but medieval poets aren’t known for being scrupulous about historical accuracy, and the change of venue shows that Chaucer is using the word in a context a bit broader than Roman history:

With his tryumphe and laurer-corouned thus,
In al the flour of Fortunes yevynge
Let I this noble prince Theseus
Toward Athenes in his wey rydinge,
And founde I wol in shortly for to bringe
The slye wey of that I gan to write,
Of quene Anelida and fals Arcite.

(With his triumph and thus laurel-crowned in all the flower of Fortune’s bounty, I leave this noble prince Theseus riding on his way toward Athens, and I will soon try to bring about the sly way in which I began to to write of Queen Anelida and the false Arcite.)

Chaucer is still using the word in the sense of a victory processional, but at around the same time John Trevisa uses triumph to refer to a victory itself in his translation of Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon:

Atte laste Maxencius was overcome atte brydge Pount Milenum, and Constantine went to Rome, and made peynte the signe and tokene of þe crosse in þe riȝt hondes of þe ymages þat senatoures hadde arered in worschippe of his triumphis and of his victorie, and he made write underneþe, “Þis is þe signe and tokene of þat God of lyf þat may nouȝt be overcome.”

(At last Maxentius was defeated at the Milvian Bridge, and Constantine when to Rome and had the sign and token of the cross painted onto the right hands of the images that the senators had erected to honor his triumph and victory, and he caused to have written underneath, “This is the sign and token of the God of life that may not be defeated.”)

Since the late fourteenth century, both senses, the historical sense referring to a Roman victory celebration and a more general one referring a victory or great achievement have been in common use in English.

Sources:

Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, eds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, 4.20, 398.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “Anelida and Arcite.” The Riverside Chaucer, third edition. Larry D. Benson, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987, lines 43–49, 377.

Higden, Ranulf. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis: Together with English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century (1874), vol. 5. John Trevisa, trans. Joseph Rawson Lumby, ed. London: Kraus Reprint, 1964, 121–23. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. triumphus, n. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Middle English Dictionary, 8 February 2025, s.v. triumphe, n.

Orosius. The Old English History of the World. Malcolm R. Godden, ed. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 44. Cambridge, Harvard UP, 2016, 2.4, 112–15.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, triumph, n., triumph, v.

Image credit: Giulio Romano, c. 1540. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.