Category: Latin
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Secretum Meum Mihi
On the topic of Latin mottoes, Edith Stein's is from Isaiah 24, 16: From the ends of the earth we have heard praises, the glory of the just one. And I said: My secret to myself, my secret to myself, woe is me: the prevaricators have prevaricated, and with the prevarication of transgressors they have…
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Vox missa nescit reverti
Good advice from Horace, Ars Poetica, 390: "A word, having been sent forth, does not know how to return."
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Of DEI and the Devil
The genitive of deus. Advocates of D.E.I. being slanderers, they are properly labeled diabolou (διαβόλου, genitive of διάβολος), "of the devil." (Anthony G. Flood) I am as little an etymologist as I am an entomologist, but to extend Tony's riff, I have often suspected an etymological connection between the German Zweifel (doubt) and the German Teufel (devil) via…
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If White Supremacy is Everywhere . . .
. . . why is it so hard to find a Latin mass?
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Omnia Sana Sanis
"All is reasonable to the reasonable." Herein lies a reason to limit one's reasonableness. For it is not reasonable to be reasonable in all things or in relation to all persons. We live among enemies. The enemy needs sometimes to experience the hard fist of unreason, the brute rejection, the blind refusal, the lethal blow.…
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Theodor Haecker on the Teaching of Latin and Greek
Substack latest.
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Dura lex, sed lex
"The law is hard, but the law is the law." Not to a leftist, however, for whom the law is but an expression of power. Power knows no moral constraint.
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Is it Better to Write in Latin or in Anglo-Saxon?
Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style (Indiana University Press, 1967; orig. pub. 1954), pp. 46-48. I have broken Blanshard’s one paragraph into three. The question has often been canvassed whether it is better to write, in the main, in Latin or Anglo-Saxon. There is no doubt that one’s writing will have a different mood or atmosphere as the…
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Latin and Greek for Philosophers
Here, by James Lesher. Sample: Ex vi terminorum: preposition + the ablative feminine singular of vis/vis(‘force’) + the masculine genitive plural of terminus/termini (‘end’, ‘limit’, ‘term’, ‘expression’): ‘out of the force or sense of the words’ or more loosely: ‘in virtue of the meaning of the words’. ‘We can be certain ex vi terminorum that…
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‘Facially’
'Facially' is seeing a lot of use recently. I take it to be an English equivalent of prima facie. Some say that we should avoid Latinisms. I say instead: use them sparingly.
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What is the Opposite of ‘Desuetude’?
Consuetude. Disuse versus usages and customs. Conseuetudines Camaldulenses: Customs of the Camaldolese. Cf. Thomas Merton, Journal, vol. 5, p. 349.
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After Enough Time Passes . . .
. . . de mortuis nil nisi bonum lapses. (In justification of some negative remarks about Senator John McCain (R-AZ) posted on my Facebook page. I pointed out that while McCain served with great distinction in the Vietnam war, he failed to translate military valor into civil courage, while Donald J. Trump, who did not…
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Bergoglio the Benighted Aims to End Latin Mass Permission
There was and is something profoundly stupid about the Vatican II 'reforms' even if we view matters from a purely immanent 'sociological' point of view. Suppose Roman Catholicism is, metaphysically, buncombe to its core, nothing but an elaborate human construction in the face of a meaningless universe, a construction kept going by human needs and desires noble…
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In Vino Veritas
Literally, "in wine, (there is) truth." But the sentence does not bear its meaning on its semantic sleeve. What the familiar Latin saying is used to express, by those who use it correctly, is the thought that a person under the influence of alcohol is less likely to dissemble and more likely to speak his…
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Of ‘Pussy’ and ‘Pusillanimous’ and Politics
A friend of mine recently maintained with a straight face that 'pusillanimous' derives from 'pussy.' As an etymological claim that is of course preposterous. But there are two questions here that we ought to distinguish. The first is whether 'pusillanimous' has roughly the same meaning as 'pussy' when the latter is used as it is…