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[rec.arts.sf.written,alt.usage.english,humanities.classics] Re: two words of Latin
More fun from aue: The dangers of guessing foreign terms.
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From: [email protected] (Mark Israel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,alt.usage.english,humanities.classics
Subject: Re: two words of Latin
Date: 21 Oct 1997 14:33:41 GMT
In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Anton Sherwood) writes:
> Now, I know it's too much to ask that a random novelist should have
> studied Latin. But is it too much to ask that author OR editor should
> have, at some point, found someone (there must be a few left in the
> world) who did have a semester of Latin, to check the translation??
Well, at least they didn't do as badly as Dr. Ash!
For those who don't know the story: An anonymous correspondent
suggested to Samuel Johnson that the English word "curmudgeon"
came from the French _coeur mechant_="wicked heart". Dr. Johnson
accordingly wrote in his dictionary: "from French _coeur mechant_,
an unknown correspondent." A few years later, Dr. Ash brought out
a dictionary in which "curmudgeon" was boldly derived "from the French
_coeur_, unknown, and _mechant_, a correspondent."
--
[email protected] Mark Israel
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