Royal Society a compliment to Lord Brouncker, a peer and the first President of the Royal Society. The society's motto, "Nullius in verba", is Latin for "Take nobody's word for it". It was adopted to signify the fellows' determination to establish facts via experiments and comes from Horace's "Epistles", where he compares himself to a gladiator who, having retired, is free from control. The society's core members are the fellows: scientists and engineers from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth selected based on having made "a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science". Fellows
Glossary of ancient Roman religion and legal usage, "verba concepta" ("preconceived words") were verbal formulas that could be adapted for particular circumstances. Compare "verba certa", "fixed words." Collections of "verba concepta" would have been part of the augural archives. Varro preserves an example, albeit textually vexed, of a formula for founding a "templum. In the legal sense, "concepta verba" (the phrase is found with either word order) were the statements crafted by a presiding praetor for the particulars of a case. Earlier in the Roman legal system, the plaintiff had to state his claim within a narrowly defined set of fixed phrases "(certa verba)"; in