Latin is rich in words that overlap to some extent with that complicated semantic field. Amarus or gravis would correspond to the connotations of disagreeableness in "nasty". Foedus, spurcus, taeter or immundus would match the sense of foulness in the English. Sordidus perhaps comes closest to being a full match. But all these Latin words would in some way blur or maim Hobbes's idea of the unpleasantness of the state of war.

There are two reasons for revising. Most obviously, writers revise when they have changed their minds. In these cases, a change in ideas dictates a change in language. At other times, however, writers will choose new words when, far from having changed their minds, they are more than ever convinced of the truth of what they originally thought. Here revision is a way of underscoring the original, not scoring it through. Despite their occasional radical appearance, the revisions Hobbes made to the English text of Leviathan when he translated it into Latin seem for the most part to have been of this latter kind. He preferred to abbreviate, rather than to blur, the memorable characterisation he had given in 1651 of that state of war whose inconveniences impel men into political society.