Related Correspondence: December 15, 1995

A Note on the Latin

Dear Professor Winslow,

Hey Prof! Dr. Latin-man! I bet you didn't expect to hear from me again so soon. I bet it feels like old times, right? Only this time without the restraining order. Ha! Ha!

Anyway, you know that United Kingdomish Sir I work for? He's sent me another thingie filled with Latin again, and everyone else I wrote to for help must have moved, because their letters came back unopened and marked 'return to sender' in their handwritings. So could you look through some Latin once more and tell me if I've transcringed it right?

V. Briceland
Secretary to Sir Charles Grandiose


Mr. Briceland:

That's 'transcribed', not 'transcringed', you boob. Cringe is what I do whenever I receive a letter from you. I see you still write in crayon. Well, well, it's nice to know that some things never change with my former students.

I have looked over your employer's 'thingie.' (It is too bad that Mr. Vocabulary seems to have abandoned us for good, isn't it?) Once again you have managed not only to produce transcriptions so far off the mark that if Rome was a dartboard, your throws would be embedded in the hind parts of some unfortunate native of the Canary Isles. I shall again--and for the last time--endeavour to translate what you have copied in a manner that the pea substituting for your brain might comprehend.

"Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur!": It has nothing to with the demotic tense. There is no demotic tense. The phrase as you have transcribed it means "Silly me. Sometimes it just kind of slips out."

"Estne confectum?": "Is it over?"

"I igitur, scortum, et ad tuum fabrum et in malam crucem!": Quite an interesting phrase, really. The latter part of the sentence is, of course, the workaday Latin curse ("Go onto a wretched cross"--I'm sure you heard me throw the phrase at your back at the cessation of office hours, no?). But I sense I strain your infamous powers of concentration. The phrase means, roughly, "Go to your blacksmith and to hell with you!" But a blacksmith, Mr. Briceland? You must have fallen asleep while copying that one. Why does the notion not surprise me?

"Nullae satisfactionis potiri non possum": "I can't get no satisfaction."

Oh, but had I followed the example of your other correspondents and not opened your letter. But no, morbid curiosity prompted me. I was rather hoping to find an obituary within. I leave it to you to guess whose.

Sincerely (and I really must insist you do not write again),
Sheridan Winslow
Professor of Classics
The College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, Virginia


Back to Advice from Sir Charles for December 15, 1995.