Words and What They Remind Me Of

Anus means old woman in Latin.  Sometimes, when I walk along the street and see old women, I remember “anus.”  The plural of anus is also anus (but the plural has a macron or line above the letter “u” – anūs).

Pera means a backpack or a satchel.  When you find someone attractive because of her/his pera, it may mean you like her/his bag.  Pera means money in Filipino/Tagalog.

Una may refer to the number one, but as an adverb it means together or together with.  I am una (together with) Armie Hammer.  That is wishful thinking.  Armie is married.  I prefer single men.  Of course, it does not mean non cupio (I do not desire) him.

Cupio does remind us of Cupid, doesn’t it?  Cupido (Cupid) is the son of Venus (the goddess of love in Roman mythology) and is a personification of sensuality.  Images of Cupid are ubiquitous during Valentine’s.

There was a street in the City of Manila called Misericordia.  The street now goes by a different name.  In Latin, misericordia means pity or compassion.  Misericors means merciful and cor means heart (cordis means “of the heart” and the English adjective cordial is derived from this), so misericors also means tender-hearted.

Lapis is pencil in Filipino/Tagalog but means stone or jewel in Latin.  If you can not afford to give your partner a jewel at this time, give her/him a pencil for the time being.  Give the actual gem later on.

Fartus means filled.  Panis means bread.  In Filipino/Tagalog, panis means putrid or rotten.  Fartus sounds like the air that comes out of our asses.  Joined together, panis fartus means sandwich.  Literally, panis fartus means filled bread.

There is no exact Latin word for sandwich because the word “sandwich” (that refers to the food that we eat) only came to be in the 1700s.¹  The Roman Empire, which used Latin as its language, fell long before the 1700s.^{2, 3, 4}  I expect the Romans ate sandwiches.  They just did not call them sandwiches.

Google translates sandwich into Latin as Sandwico (with a capital S).

Related to the sandwich is the hamburger whose creation, discovery or popularity was also after the fall of the Roman Empire.

The Latin word for hamburger may be minutal which literally means dish of minced meat (or ground meat).

Google translates hamburger into Latin as frustrum assae.  Frustum, not frustrum, means scrap of food.  The Latin noun assa means nanny or nurse, and assae means “of the nanny” or “of the nurse.”  The Latin adjective assa means roasted or baked and is feminine.  Its masculine equivalent is assus; neuter assum.  Frustum assum means roasted food.

Assus, assa, assum all have “ass” in them, and I am reminded of the anus once again.⁵

Notes

¹Andrew F. Smith.  Hamburger: A Global History.  London: Reaktion Books, 2008.  12.

²Michael Grant.  History of Rome.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978.  435.

The book places the end of the Western Roman Empire at 476 CE.

³Christopher Allmand, ed.  The New Cambridge Medieval History, c.1415-1500.  Vol. 7.  1998.  Cambridge: University Press, 2006.  182.

The book places the end of the Eastern Roman Empire, via the fall of Constantinople, at 1453 CE.

⁴“Byzantine Empire.”  Ancient History.  History.com, 2010.  Web.  17 Nov. 2017.  <www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/byzantine-empire>.

This article about the Eastern Roman Empire a.k.a. Byzantine Empire is much easier to read than The New Cambridge Medieval History and is readily accessible online.

⁵Remembering asses when seeing old women raises my feminist red flag.  It is not my intention to slight old women or to be ageist.  Familiar words surface in language learning and can give learners a surprise when the meaning is different from what they have grown accustomed to.  This surprise contributes to the words’ prominence in learners’ recall (against their better judgment).