Academia is completely jargon-brained. Mao was right to send them to the countryside to shovel pig shit.

Oppobrium

It just means shame, a near universal concept found in almost every single human society. “Uh aktually, oppobrium has no modern equivalent because the Roman’s understanding of shame is different from modern society.” Shame is shame. Every society has the concept of shame. Obviously, every society has their own particular twist and interpretation of it.

Latifundium

It’s just a plantation within a Roman context. Academia being jargon-brained means using this word even when it’s really obvious you’re writing something within a Roman context. If you’re writing a paper about the economy of the late Roman empire, you don’t need to say “latifundium” or even “Roman plantation.” You can just say “plantation” because the paper is obviously about Rome. Now, if you’re comparing different types of plantations, then it would make sense to use the word. If you’re comparing a Roman plantation with a Haitian plantation, using “latifundium” and “habitation” would make sense since “Roman plantation” and “Haitian plantation” gets cumbersome after a while.

Bellicose

It means warlike, aggressive, or combative. It’s one of those words that’s occasionally used in writing but never used in speech. Most people would just use “belligerent” as in a “belligerent drunk.” And I just looked it up and both “bellicose” and “belligerent” come from the same Latin “bellum” for “war.” Another instance of academia being divorced from the masses where they picked the slightly less often used word even when both words mean the same thing and come from the same Latin word.

Effete

It’s not used often and for good reason. The word has homophobic and misogynist undertones. When you call someone an effete man, you’re basically calling him a limp-wristed homo. The word originally meant “woman weakened from having just given birth.”