Lexical Investigations: Desiderata
Desiderata is a plural noun, with the singular form desideratum, meaning “things wanted or needed.” For many, the word desiderata most often evokes a famous poem by Max Ehrmann, written in 1927 and often referred to simply as Desiderata, without attribution or quotation marks. The poem begins with the oft-quoted lines, “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, / and remember what peace there …