A while ago now, we mentioned that the Royal Society had dropped from its website all reference to ‘on the word of no one’, the traditional translation of its motto Nullius in Verba, and that its former president, Bob May, had re-translated it as ‘respect the facts’. Well, the RS has since come up with a third possibility, which it has now added to its web page about the motto:

The Royal Society’s motto ‘Nullius in verba’, roughly translated as ‘Nothing in words’, dates back to 1663…

Nothing in words. Indeed.