Vitamin Bottle Latin

This morning as I shook out the last fish oil capsule in the jar, a little packet with the brand name Dessicare also fell into my hand. Aha! I said! Latin! The Latin verb dēsiccō, dēsiccāre I dry, drain gives us the present participle dēsiccāns, dēsiccantis drying which in turn becomes the English word desiccant, something which dries out or keeps dry. So the little packet of moisture absorbing powder or crystals was helping to keep my capsules dry. I love beginning the morning with a little Latin!

An Early Encounter with Latin

Recently I have been reflecting that there was a time in my life when I did NOT know Latin. I began studying Latin as a junior in high school, so for the first sixteen years of my life, I was Latinless. One of my first encounters with Latin was the song O Caritas by Cat Stevens, a song from the album Catch Bull at Four which was released in the early 1970s. The song is hardly uplifting, but I liked it then and I still like it, and how many rock songs can you sing that are in Latin? You can hear the song and watch English lyrics here, and then check out the Latin lyrics.

Digging in the Dirt

This past Sunday found me catching up on some magazines, including the February edition of The Field, an English publication. A one-page interview with garden expert Alan Titchmarsh contained the Latin phrase infra dig, short for infrā dignitātem, Latin for "beneath one's dignity." Mr. Titchmarsh was reflecting on his early career in gardening, and commented that such a career was considered less dignified than other professions. Mr. Titchmarsh went on to host a very informative and entertaining television program on BBC-TV called Groundforce, and has become one of the most recognized gardening pundits in England; you can investigate the magazine here.

Big Cheese

I laughed out loud when I saw a toasty orange vehicle go past me on my way home on the Saw Mill Parkway on Friday afternoon, February 19th. I was marvelling at the orange color, and then I read the license plate: QUESO, the Spanish word for cheese. Really, the car was the color of the kind of melted orange cheese you might find on a perfectly baked macaroni and cheese. And the Latin connection is that queso comes from the Latin word cāseus, -ī m. cheese, which, according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary, can also be used as a term of endearment. Years ago one of my first students at my current school was talking about taking The Cheese home from school; she was referring to her square little schoolbus, also a yellow-orange vehicle.

Latin Roll Call

Earlier today my colleague emailed me with a sighting of Latin in a new animated film of the stop-action variety called "Fantastic Mr. Fox." I know almost nothing about this film, but I decided to look for the Latin Roll Call and found it. Mr. Fox decides to call all the animals hiding out in his home by their binomial nomenclature, their Latin genus and species names. I love these two anglicized Latin words, because knowing the Latin words makes so clear how the two-named system works. The genus (Latin for "kind, sort, race") is the general kind of animal (or plant), and the species (Latin for "appearance") is the specific sort, usually based on its appearance. Among the animals listed in the roll call are the mole (talpa europea), rabbit (oryctolagus cuniculus), weasel (mustela nivalis), beaver (castor fiber), and badger (meles meles). Of course, looking into what each of these Latin words means will take you to many interesting insights into our furry friends. In the meantime just hearing the words is a lot of fun.

Arms and a woman

I read in the 11/2/2009 edition of The Weekly Standard about a letter written to New Criterion magazine by Sarah Ruden, whose translation of the Aeneid I am using in my AP Vergil class this year. So I decided to see if I could locate the letter at the magazine's website, and I was astonished and delighted to learn that the blog of New Criterion is called Arma virumque, arms and the man, the opening words of Vergil's Aeneid, and a clear explanation for the title is given in the sidebar at the link above.

Image of God

I went back to my high school alma mater this weekend for a Board of Trustees meeting. While there I attended a reception in the school’s art gallery where I viewed the delightful sculptures of an alumna I know from the class of ’74. Hoping to send her a message, I picked up her business card and was amused to notice that the words imago Dei "image of God" were part of her email address. I smiled to recognize that she as a sculptor was mindful of the ultimate sculptor of us all, and I also immediately recalled one of my recent favorite songs, heard on a recording by New York State dulcimer player and extraordinary musician/singer Susan Trump. The song is called “Fashioned in the Clay,” written by Elmer Beal. You can read the lyrics and a little about the songwriter here.