23
votes
Accepted
What should the corona virus be called in Latin?
A Latin professor in a classical highschool in Italy adopted the translation virus coronarium that appeared on this article of Ephemeris, an online newspaper in Latin, published on February 22. The ...
- 4,538
14
votes
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How would you say "body" as in when stating a law of physics?
Yes, corpus is correct for "body" in the sense used in physics.
That is the word Newton used in his laws of motion:
Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter ...
- 116k
13
votes
Accepted
What exactly is brevis brevians?
For reference:
iambus: light + heavy
pyrrhicus: light + light
creticus: heavy + light + heavy
dactylus: heavy + light + light
Brevis Brevians is a tendency in early Latin, first attested in early ...
- 1,470
11
votes
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Exactly what is a declension?
Good question!
"Declension" (like "conjugation") is a word that means two different things.
In the abstract sense, "declension" is the abstract process of changing a noun or adjective's ending to ...
- 69.3k
11
votes
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Changing tones (?) in Classical Latin
What you seem to be hearing is likely this particular speaker's idea of pitch accent. Pitch accent is a feature of certain languages in which the word accent is not marked by stress (as it is in ...
- 36.1k
10
votes
Accepted
Why do we call a case a casus? And why rectus, obliquus?
Here's a short answer so far - no one knows.
Brandenburg 2013 writes that
"In non-technical contexts, ptôsis refers among other things to the ‘falling of dice’ (Pl. Resp. 10,604c6; Aristot. Eth. ...
- 11.8k
10
votes
What is the term for extremely loose Latin word order?
If Latin prose had an "extremely loose word order", which is (generally) not the case, the appropriate linguistic term involved would be "non-configurationality". However, rather than being vaguely ...
- 9,121
9
votes
What should the corona virus be called in Latin?
One option is to turn the determiner "corona" into an adjective.
That would lead to something like virus coronatum, "a crowned virus".
I think it makes sense to keep the word virus ...
- 116k
9
votes
Is there a poetic term for breaking up a phrase, rather than a word?
I believe this is called an anastrophe or a hyperbaton.
For Wikipedia, a hyperbaton is a phrase being interrupted by the insertion of words not belonging to the phrase. Your example would meet this ...
- 36.1k
8
votes
Why was the subjunctive mood 'so called because the Greek subjunctive mood is used almost exclusively in subordinate clauses'?
Can someone please expound and enlarge on this sentence? Why was the subjunctive mood 'regarded as specially appropriate to ‘subjoined’ or subordinate clauses'?
Perhaps you are looking at it the ...
- 116k
8
votes
Caeteris paribus
The third part of Descartes's Principia Philosophiae (pg. 78 of this edition) contains a more literal translation of "all things unchanged":
Si autem caeteris immutatis, contingat ut minuatur illa ...
- 42.9k
7
votes
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What is the difference between a roman ("novel") and a "Milesiae fabula"?
(A partial answer, on which I hope others will expand:)
There was an original collection of Milesian Tales (Μιλησικά), written in Greek by Aristides of Miletus in the second century BC. These have ...
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6
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Why do we call a case a casus? And why rectus, obliquus?
It appears that you are correct that a casus is seen as a kind of metaphor for a noun "falling into place."
Maurus Servius Honoratus (4-5th century AD) has an important quote that makes two ...
- 42.9k
6
votes
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Meaning of Spiritus Lenis
"Smooth breathing." When a word in ancient Greek began with a vowel, ancient scholars gave it one of two breathing marks. The spiritus lenis (Gk. ψιλὸν πνεῦμα) meant it was not aspirated, while the ...
cmw♦
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6
votes
What is the "economy principle" in papyrology exactly?
Here’s my original suggestion - once again, this is my guess, and it can be wrong.
Economy might stand here for the most efficient use of space/materials/other resources at the disposal of the scribe ...
- 11.8k
6
votes
Grammatical terminology
I'm not aware of a book about this specifically, but almost all of our grammar terminology, at least when it comes to Greek and Latin specifically, is due to a (short!) work ascribed to Dionysius ...
- 11.1k
6
votes
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Pronunciation in medical terminology
As far as I can tell, there are no classical precedents for the specific form of the ending -oideus. It ultimately comes from Ancient Greek -οειδής, an ending found mostly on third-declension ...
- 30.1k
5
votes
Does ancient Greek have its own terms for grammar?
Yes indeed! There were definitely pre-modern Greek grammarians who described the grammar of their language in Greek; Dionysius Thrax, quoted by Colin Fine, is one of the more reputable ones. These ...
- 69.3k
5
votes
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Does ancient Greek have its own terms for grammar?
You can see the text of Dionesius Thrax' Τέχνη Γραμματική in Wikisource.
Section 14, ΠΕΡΙ ΟΝΟΜΑΤΟΣ says
"Γένη μὲν οὖν εἰσι τρία· ἀρσενικόν, θηλυκόν, οὐδέτερον"
and
"Πτώσεις ὀνομάτων εἰσὶ ...
- 646
5
votes
Why did the Romans link Autumn with earth and melancholy, Spring with air and sanguine, and Winter with water and phelgm?
The (Pseudo-)Hippocratean treatise “On the nature of man” proposes the theory of the four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and the imaginary black bile) as an explanation not only for diseases, ...
- 18k
5
votes
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What does 'iure civili' mean in Apuleius VI.23, when Cupid and Psyche get married?
This one seems pretty straightforward to me? The notion is of a proper jus civile marriage, as opposed to the commonlawish jus gentium. It's a sort of joke, right in Apuleius' wheelhouse. Jus civile ...
5
votes
Accepted
General term for each inflected form of a lexeme
I would simply say: "Illi is an inflected form of ille. Illi is the singular dative masculine form of ille."
(I am not sure what the role of "declension" in your example is. I found it more natural to ...
- 116k
5
votes
Please briefly define "futurum instans"
Futurum instans literally means "immediate/imminent future." ("Instant" comes from this word but has a different flavor in English now.)
Futurum instans seems to be a term ...
- 42.9k
5
votes
Accepted
Is there a Latin equivalent to ἐπίκοινος?
Priscian would probably have called it genus promiscuum or genus epicoenum:
Diomedes adds:
“Latini promiscuum vel subcommune vocant”
- 11.8k
5
votes
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How do you talk about set theory in Latin? Specifically, how do you say "set" as opposed to "union"?
I am an assistant professor of mathematics, and I am quite familiar with the issues of translating mathematical concepts between languages.
A main difficulty is that there are so many concepts of a ...
- 116k
4
votes
Is there a rhetorical term for personification?
Lausberg’s admirable book Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik §425 uses „fictio personae“ and also „prosopopoeia“.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "personification" was "formed within ...
- 18k
4
votes
How to translate machine learning?
First, let's just note that the English phrase "machine learning" does not unambiguously communicate its meaning. If you had no context for it, you wouldn't know if it meant using a machine to learn, ...
- 7,442
4
votes
in order of temporal proximity
The answer given by Joonas is good, and exactly along the lines that you suggest. However, this concept can often seem rather awkward to express in Latin, so I think it worthwhile to expound more ...
- 18.2k
4
votes
in order of temporal proximity
One Latin word for "proximity" is proximitas and "temporal" can be translated as temporalis.
Therefore I would translate "in order of temporal proximity" as in ordine proximitatis temporalis.
This is ...
- 116k
4
votes
Does ancient Greek have its own terms for grammar?
The answer is yes.
A good introductory reference is Ancient Greek Scholarship by Eleanor Dickey (OUP, 2007). The relevant section is 4.2: Technical Vocabularies, pp. 123-128. There is also quite a ...
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