Vulgar Latin (in Renaissance Latin, vulgare Latinum or Latinum vulgare) refers to any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All works written during classical times in Latin used Classical Latin rather than Vulgar Latin, with very few exceptions (most notably sections of Gaius Petronius' Satyricon). It is sometimes also called colloquial Latin, or Common Romance (particularly in the late stage).

The broad term Vulgar Latin should not be confused with the more specific term Proto-Romance, which refers specifically to the theoretical common ancestor to the modern Romance languages. As such Proto-Romance may have been only one of the Vulgar Latin languages and only a very late stage of that language branch.

Vulgar Latin is often confused with Proto-Romance. Proto-Romance is a proto-language, i.e. the latest stage common to all of the Romance languages. Because some of the less familiar Romance languages branched off early from the others (Sardinian in particular, followed by Romanian and related Eastern Romance languages), it is also common to reconstruct later stages: e.g. Proto Continental Romance (after Sardinian branched off); Proto Italo-Western Romance (after Sardinian and Romanian branched off); and Proto Western Romance (after the branching-off of Sardinian, Romanian, and the central and southern Italian languages, including standard Italian).

"The Black Dahlia" was a nickname given to Elizabeth Short (July 29, 1924 – January 15, 1947), an American woman who was the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. Short acquired the moniker posthumously by newspapers in the habit of nicknaming crimes they found particularly colorful. Short was found mutilated, her body sliced in half at the waist, on January 15, 1947, in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. Short's unsolved murder has been the source of widespread speculation, leading to many suspects, along with several books and film adaptations of the story.

Elizabeth Short was born in greater Boston, Massachusetts; she grew up and lived in Medford. She was the third of five daughters of Cleo Short and Phoebe Mae Sawyer. Her father built miniature golf courses until the 1929 stock market crash, in which he lost much of the family's assets. In 1930, he parked his car on a bridge and vanished, leading some to believe he had committed suicide. Short's mother moved the family to a small apartment in Medford, and found work as a bookkeeper. It was not until later that Short would discover her father was alive and was living in California.