Latin Phrases

Vita sine libris mors est = Life w/o books is death.

Ster cus accidit = Shit happens!

Pergamentum init, exit purgamentum! = GIGO

Pone ubi sol non lucet = Put it where the sun don't shine!

Osculare pultem meam = Kiss my grits!

Obesa cantavit = The fat lady has sung.

Fabricati diem = Make my day! (D. Harry)

O di immortales = Good Heavens! (uttered by Cicero on theSenate floor)

I found these on the internet & thought i 'd share them. 8^)

I'm partial to "Quot libros, quam breve tempus" myself. :D

I use FelixIrrumator as my Toon name in all my MMORPGs. It's Latin, and it's dirty.

I've been known to mutter "Cogito, ergo sum" to myself at work to be reassured that I really am still existing. ;)

I also used to tell this story about a mus and a puella emitting sonums. Yes, I was a geek. (Before anyone corrects my Latin spellings, I took a course that used an obsure form of spelling and extensions. You spell them differently, but it all sounds the same. Never been able to figure it out though.)

My mantra from my first marriage: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
(My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault)

I got tired of saying it, so I divorced her.

My favourite is still "Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam! " (I have a catapult. Give me all your money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head)

Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure. (I cannot hear you. I have a banana in my ear.)

Utinam logica falsa tuam totam philosophiam suffodiant! (May false logic undermine your entire philosophy!)

Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur (Whatever is said in Latin is seen as better)

Coincidentally I recently came across handy latin phrases which features such gems as:

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur.
Oh! Was I speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips out.

Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo.
I'll have a pizza with everything on it.

#3 Jasper: Oh my. That *is* dirty!
*blushes, yet is happy to see the source of her livelihood put to good use*
:)

My favourite has always been:

"Illegitimis non carborundum"

Don't let the bastards get you down

I'm now trying to recall the book I read where the main character quoted that...

edit to add, it's meant to be mock latin though isn't it?

Isn't it in one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books? And yes, it is dog-Latin of a particularly mongrel variety.

A propos of which, a friend of mine once had a bull terrier he called Porcus Canis (Schweinhund!).

One of my favourite Latin phrases is my old school motto : Sic itur ad astra

roughly translated as *this is the path to immortality* and in the context of the school - *knowledge/learning is the way to the stars*.

#3, #9 - It's probably embarrassing to me that I could translate that almost immediately. I did a course on Roman writers in (senior) high school, and our teacher caught our attention with *that* Catullus poem. I still know the first two lines. *blushes*

I had to look that up. Thankfully I didn't come across that a couple of years ago while attempting to homeschool latin with my children. *heh*
The only phrase any of us remember from our efforts is a meal blessing, "Benedic domine nos et haec, tua dona..."

#14 Will: I teach that particular poem every year in my beginning Latin class. Catullus is a hoot.

Our college choir had the un-official moto omnia erratis ime efficiebant while I was on the committee (not entirely unrelated, I was an awful librarian). I never saw it written down, so may have messed up the spelling, but the intention was it has gone/is going/will go horribly wrong.

#8 - Crustum Etruscum cum omnibus made my face split in two :D

On a somewhat related note it have never stopped to astonish me how US and UK people litter their language with latin and french words and phrases. Like the language they were born with is not good enough.
Of course we in Sweden do the same thing, but we do it with english words and phrases ;-)

#18
As Spanish is already too close to Latin, being a romance language, here in Panama we also do that with English phrases... they sound foreign enough. :)

My favorite one is 'semper in excretum est, sed altittudo variat' (always in the sh*t, only the depth varies)

Please forgive any misspelling... I have never seen it written down :)

hfglen and scaifea, a Marcele asked me to say hi! and to say thank you again with all the Latin help you offered with naming her new species :)

#18

If you want the proper answer, its due to Latin being the language of the Church, and French being the language of the Norman invaders to Britain, who were then considered much more sophisticated than the Saxon British. Both Latin and French were languages for the commoner to aspire to, but never truly reach.

Hence we say Cow for the animal because the saxons were the ones tending to them, but Beef (from Boeuf) for the meal as the Normans/French were the ones eating it.

#21 - Latin was the language of the church here as well, German and Dutch the language of the merchants, and French the language of the aristocracy. And like all languages we have a lot of mixed influences/loans.
But I didn't mean loans and imports but outright use of the language, mixing it in at a run.

#22

A desire to appear important, educated and pretentious perhaps?

#23 - Probably ;-)
My dad the scholar also do this all the time which make some of his texts almost illegible for anyone not having made a serious study of Latin... But I don't think he's aware of it. I certainly haven't told him.

My Ancient Languages professor in college had this sign on his door:
Sola bona lingua est mortua lingua
(The only good language is a dead language.)

(I'm writing it here from memory, so any inaccuracies or misspellings are mine, not his.)

Mens sana in corpore sano - my first high school's motto - A healthy mind in a healthy body. I've also seen it as A sound mind in a sound body. Either way.

I stopped going to that high school in 1967, but the motto has always stuck with me.

Vice versa. Used as part of the swedish language (my prior post made me spend some brain time on this issue, lol) in a way that most people don't reflect on its origin. Tabula rasa is used that way, too.

And as a kid I wrote Per Aspera Ad Astra on any surface available. Almost ;-)

Errare Humanum Est, which I learnt the use of though the Asterix comic books. Only later did I learn that it's attributed to Hieronymus.

And it's other version - Errare humanum est, perdonare divinum est.

Also seen misspelled as "Herrar es humano" in Spanish. ;P

I think I saw that in a Mafalda cartoon, so long ago I don't remember. Involved the image of a horse being shod. (Untranslatable pun, "herrar" meaning "to put a horseshoe on.")

#28 - In Sweden we use this variant instead - Errare humanum est, ignoscere divinum. But I suppose the meaning is the same ;-)

A Roman walks into a bar and asks for a martinus.

"You mean a martini?" the bartender asks.

The Roman replies, "If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it!"

31> ah, classic Wayne and Shuster! "I told him, Julie, don't go. Don't go Julie, I said. Don't go, it's the Ides of March."

>32 tardis:

One of my favourites!

Shit if I'd known it was old I wouldn't have posted it.
It's hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.

34> It's not old, it's classic! Timeless, even.

#31 - So can I reverse that in a bar when I get a watered down martini?

#31 Ah yes, dear old Secret Agent 00VII

#36 If the bartender is of, ahem, "a certain age"

Members of one Oxford rowing crew have the motto "Non circum coitus" on the back of their sweaters, which I always thought rather smart.

Since it seems Latin phrases are pretty popular, thought I'd share this link to a web site with "bumper stickers" you can use online. The link goes to the first of seven pages of stickers in Latin.

http://www.internetbumperstickers.com/latin.html

Corrigendum to #10. Much of the humour in this lies in the word "carborundum", which is the hardest artificial substance yet devised. Also, the termination "-um" suggest the classical passive periphrastic. Thus, a better rendering is "Don't let the bastards GRIND you down". Verb. sap. -- Godeharius

And while we're about it, how 'bout FC Forberg's spirited inquiry, "Et graecos et romanos fortissimos paedicones et acerrimos cinaedos fuisse quis est quin sciat?" And the answer is, sadly, too many. -- Godeharius

#10 - It was in The Handmaiden's Tale.

In rebus 10 atque 42. Nothing could surprise me less. That particular author is, as far as I'm concerned, Nothing Buffed to a High Gloss. My daughter was required to read that book in high school and she read sections of it aloud to me; I seriously considered asking for a tuition rebate. Thanks for cluing me in. -- G

I found a huge list of Latin phrases online & these are some of my favorites:

errare humanum est-to err is human
ex cathedra-from the chair
deus ex machina-a god from a machine *(I thought that this one meant 'the ghost in the machine')
Dies irae-Day of Wrath
ab absurdo-from the absurd
quo vadis-where are you going
amicus curiae-friend of the court
canis canemedit-dog eat dog
sine die-without a day, adjournment (this is what the chairpersons of our state legislature say at the end of each year's session as they gavel it to a close)
I always wondered what that meant & now I know!

>44 Vanye: I have always understood that the machine was part of the stage machinery of a theatre, and the funtion of the god was to appear from nowhere and solve all the plot problems the author had no other way of extricating himself from.

Reductio ad absurdum - reduction to absurdity

"Credo QUIA absurdum est." /
"I believe (it) BECAUSE* it is absurd !" \
-- Tertullian (?)


*Because: i.e. as opposed to
"in spite of"