Where it comes from: The text is not gibberish; it is a scrambled, modified version of a 1st-century BC Latin treatise called De finibus bonorum et malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by the Roman philosopher Cicero. [1]
Literal meaning: Because words were removed, added, and altered over centuries of typesetting, the text is nonsensical Latin. The first two words, "lorem ipsum," are simply an incomplete truncation of "dolorem ipsum," which translates to "pain itself". [1]