A propos of nothing in particular...

[amedia]

kai su, teknon is NOT Greek for et tu, Brute!

The first two words are the same, but teknon means "child." (IIRC, this variant account of Caesar's dying words raised an interesting question as to whether Caesar, if he did utter those words, was addressing Brutus in a way similar to how, nowadays, an older man will sometimes call a younger one, "son," or whether it was meant literally and Caesar was actually Brutus's father.)

Comments

[lalalatentacles.livejournal.com]

This is how I feel when people say 'we hung him'. NO NO IT'S HANGED, YOU BASTARD. HANGED.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

YES YES YES! So very true.

[lalalatentacles.livejournal.com]

On that note, Mark Gatiss used the word 'hanged' correctly the other day in a tweet and I was so happy I had to @reply him and thank him. XD

Oh, so hey did you ever re-watch Alice in Wonderland after that intense discussion we had about it?

[amedia.livejournal.com]

On that note, Mark Gatiss used the word 'hanged' correctly the other day in a tweet and I was so happy I had to @reply him and thank him. XD

LOL and Yay!

I have to confess I haven't rewatched Alice, but I'm still thinking about your very cool interpretation. And I got to see an exuberant production of Apollinaire's The Breasts of Tiresias this spring, an early Surrealist work in which a woman becomes a man by sheer willpower and goes on to be a successful soldier ... it was a splendidly exuberant production and it made me think of you and Alice!

[lalalatentacles.livejournal.com]

If I could change apparent sex characteristics by sheer willpower I would be very happy indeed.

I hope you like it. I would be lying if I said I didn't sincerely hold out hope that you would watch it and be interested in the sequel I ended up writing. ^_^;;

[amedia.livejournal.com]

I know I've been away from LJ a lot recently, but I would love to read your sequel, if you will forgive me in advance for being slow to read & comment!

[lalalatentacles.livejournal.com]

Champion Rising (http://archiveofourown.org/works/105139/chapters/144595), and don't fret. I'm really excited to have you read it. Feel free to print it out and please do let me know what you think.

[chorale.livejournal.com]

B thinks that your icon legend says either desirable to men and gods or pleasing to men and gods. Does it mean either one, or something else?

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Tell B I'm impressed he recognized divom!

The phrase means "Delight of gods and men," and it's part of the invocation to Venus that opens Lucretius's De Rerum Natura. The entire first line reads:
Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas

something like "Mother of the descendants of Aeneas, delight of gods and men," so "delight" is in apposition to "Mother," i.e., it's in the same grammatical case (vocative, the case used for direct address) as genetrix and gives us more information about it.

Aeneadum is genitive plural (genitives usually translate as "of" or "of the"), and it's a very Greeky word; that -des ending denoting descendants is something you usually find in Greek, like referring to Agamemnon as "Atreides," i.e., a descendant of Atreus. (Which of course is now making think of Dune. ADD moment!) Here, Aeneadum refers to the Roman people - I've seen this translated as "Mother of the Roman race," for example.

Genetrix is also a Greeky-flavored word; the standard word for "mother" is, of course, mater; genetrix means something more like "begetter" or "generator" with a feminine ending, and it's based on one of the relatively rare roots in Latin that actually comes from Greek.

The word deus, dei meaning god has all sorts of weird variations, but divom is especially funny-looking (divom and hominum are both genitive plural). Lucretius is writing in the Golden Age of Latin, not long after Caesar and Cicero, but he's writing in a deliberately archaic style, using lots of old forms (like nunquam for numquam, or divom for deorum), Greek-flavored forms, and even made-up words. The closest analogy I can think of, off the top of my head, is Lovecraft.

The illustration of Venus is from SPQR Blues.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

"Recognized" is a greater merit than I can claim; it was "made an educated guess." I know the root div- from divus and English words such as divine, divinity, divination; I know -que as a suffix meaning "and," so I could figure the whole phrase was something about "gods and men"; and being followed by voluptas, presumably a noun, it seemed likely to be genitive, and that gave a sensible English translation, so I went with it. Thanks for the detailed parsing!

I think I've seen somewhere the suggestion that Latin pater vs. genitor is useful for dealing with issues like adoption: The man who begot a kid is its genitor but the one who sat up with it when it was sick and told it stories and paid for its dental work is its pater.

[chorale.livejournal.com]

At long last I now know who the Atreides family descends from! In Dune, Herbert refers to them as being a very old family from Earth, older than even the Bene Gesserit order, but he never said how far they went back. I see this is one of Herbert's references, like "Muad' Dib" actually meaning "Instructor of Princes."

Okay, sorry for the post hijack. "Genetrix" I get. I know that "ix" is a feminine ending, and that the masculine form is "genetor." I guessed that "voluptas" might be related to "voluptuous," but I am always wary of what the French call "faux amis" words--like "editor" in English meaning one who acts as an agent for a publisher, while "editeur" means "publisher". The rest of the Latin is beyond me.

B has amazing powers of etymology, doesn't he?