All right, so the list of words that ROT-13 into their reverse is already known. Makyo mentioned this afternoon that ‘arena’ is almost an anagram of itself in ROT-13 (it’s neran) and of course I was struck with the urge to find out which and how many words actually are rearrangements of themselves after ROT-13 […]
Tagged anagrams, ROT-13All right, so my bugbear for the week has been anointment.  In particular, unguere (or ungere), a Latin word meaning “to anoint”. My problem is that “anoint” is one of those 1913ese words that doesn’t correspond well to anything we talk about today. In its historical or ceremonial context—where you might anoint someone king, say—the […]
Tagged 1913ese, 1st century BC, anointment, Cicero, translation, unguereThe matter of this plural is something I happened to fall into by accident this week. I was working on this out of Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.50: Vomitione canes, purgatione autem alvos ibes Ægyptiæ curant. Dogs treat their stomachs by vomiting, while the ibises of Egypt do it by purging the bowel. I went […]
Tagged 1st century BC, Cicero, dog Latin, ibis, translation