ANST - Dirty Latin and Latin Phrases

[Gunnora Hallakarva]

At 05:25 PM 2/12/98 -0600, you wrote:
>Saw your offer to help translate on Mark Harris' site on the net.  Could
>you translate my proposed law office motto -- "Screw 'em if they can't
>take a joke" - into Latin.  It's been over 35 years since I had Latin in
>high school and my legal dictionaries aren't much help.
>Thank you for your assistance.

Ah, this request takes me back to my early school days learning Latin,
peeking in the big Latin dictionary looking for dirty words.

Did you know...

Our modern term "fornicate" derives from Latin fornix "arch, column,
colonnade" -- a term which also came to mean "brothel" since low-class
whores would sell their wares under the arches in the Colisseum and other
public buildings.

The formal Latin term for "intercourse" is "congressus." (Which I would
guess a lawyer would appreciate, especially given current events in
Washington!)

Other words dealing with sexual intercourse include:

imbuo, -ere (3rd conj. verb) "to wet, soak, stain, fill, impregnate"
fecundo, -are (1st conj. verb) "to fertilize, to impregnate"

The sense of the word for intercourse in the famous phrase "Screw 'em if
they can't take a joke" is one of forced or non-consensual sex, sex used as
a penalty or punishment. There are a couple of ways to translate this
concept, but principally the word used is:

stupro, -are (1st conj. verb) "to ravish, rape"  The singular imperative
would be "stupra."

Other vocabulary for this phrase includes:

eos (accusative plural masculine demonstrative pronoun from is, ea, id) "them"
si (conjunction) if
nesciunt (present tense 3rd person plural of nescio, -ire, a 4th conj.
verb) "not know how to, not be able to" 
accipio, -ere (3rd i-stem conj. verb) "to take, receive, admit, welcome,
entertain, hear, understand, approve of, assent to"
jocum (accusative sing. of jocus, joci, a 2nd declension noun) "joke"

Thus the phrase would be:

Eos stupra si jocum nesciunt accipere.

Hope this helps.

cc: Stefan li Rous for his Florilegium files.



Wæs Þu Hæl (Waes Thu Hael)

::GUNNORA::

Gunnora Hallakarva
Herskerinde
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Ek eigi visa þik hversu oðlask Lofstirrlauf-Kruna heldr hversu na Hersis-Aðal
(Ek eigi thik hversu odhlask Lofstirrlauf-Kruna heldr hversu na Hersis-Adhal)

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