Ad Absurdum

Yesterday, I came across the English expression “ad infinitum”¹, which means “to infinity”. It is often used in contexts where something is repeated forever. For instance, it is used in the following way: Every distance can be halved, and the halves can be halved again, and so on ad infinitum.².

Thinking about “ad”, there are many English expressions that remain in the exact same form as the original Latin. In Latin, “ad” is a preposition meaning “to”, “for”, “toward”, or something like these, which precedes a noun in the accusative case. One of the most common, I think, is “ad hoc”, which literally translates as “for this”.

I personally knew of just one more example including “ad”, which is “ad nauseam”, meaning “to the extent of nausea”. I looked up some other similar expressions, and found several words with the form of “ad ${something}” meaning “to the extent of ${something}”. For example, there are “ad absurdum”³ and “ad extremum”⁴. Can you guess what they mean?