vexata quaestio

• quaestio vexata
• vexata quæstio

Learned borrowing from Latin vexāta quaestiō.

vexata quaestio (plural vexatae quaestiones)

1. A vexed, unresolved, or intractable question.
   • 1819, Hansard‎^[1], column 1275:

     On entering upon this question, he states it to be one of great difficulty—a vexata quaestio as it were, and one which had at all times much divided, and at the time he wrote, still continued to divide the opinions of great jurists.

   • 1991, Carmen Pensado, “How was Leonese Vulgar Latin Read?”, in Roger Wright, editor, Latin and the Roman Languages in the Middle Ages, page 190:

     It may actually boil down to the vexata quaestio of how different must language varieties become in order to be considered independent.

   • 2010, Samantha Velluti, New Governance and the European Employment Strategy:

     European intervention in the social sphere—and annexed questions such as why, to what extent and in what way—has long been a vexata quaestio.

From vexāta (“vexed”) + quaestiō (“question”).

vexāta quaestiō f (genitive vexātae quaestiōnis); third declension

1. vexata quaestio (a vexed, unresolved, or intractable question)

First-declension noun with a third-declension noun.