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April 03, 2008 |
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Grinding Down
FOUND by Moffat Kiloh
in Pickering Ontario, Canada
Found this in the back of "The Bedside Book of the Art of Living" that I had found near an abandoned house in my neighborhood.
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Find Another House August 25, 2007 |
Gender Studies February 24, 2002 |
Unite! January 16, 2005 |
Sunset December 21, 2006 |
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
» The BBC's Jamillah Knowles mixes it up with the FOUND crew after a show in London (starts 1/3 of the way through)!
» We're hopping on a plane and jetting to Europe for our Fall 2008 Euro Tour!
This is really helpful advice for me right now. Love it.
That is F-ing awesome. What is that, Latin? I always wanted to know how to say "There's No Replacement for Displacement" in Latin.
Good Morning, Jonathan! What does that really say?
who needs The Bedside Book of the Art of Living when these few words sum up some life advice so well?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimi_non_ca (oh, how i dig a good "mock latin aphorism")
oops, the full link didn't appear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimi_non_carboru
hope i'm not stepping on Jonathan's toes, but (from above link): Illegitimi non carborundum is a mock-Latin aphorism jokingly taken to mean "don't let the bastards grind you down".
I remember reading this quote in A Handmaid's Tale... but I doubt that is where the saying originated.
what does wikipedia have to say?:
Illegitimi non carborundum is a mock-Latin aphorism jokingly taken to mean "don't let the bastards grind you down".
sorry i didn't mean to repeat what minphx in the west said.
I'm pretty sure she clears that up in the handmaids tale doesnt she?
I prefer the alternative version: Non illigitimi vincit. Which is also cod-Latin and means "Don't let the bastards win." I'm not sure about the termination of "vincit" for a plural though.
DLTBGYD is also a song by the Toasters...
hey, iused to live in pickering.. too cool.
Here they come..... Here they come....
Deanna and Wikipedia are right about this being a sort of "mock Latin". But at the moment that's nearly missing the point of this Find.
Look at the handwriting!
Latin: elegant, stylish, cultured, calligraphic.
English: rough, labored, rude, pedestrian
That says it all.
[Bibliographic note: go to your library or bookstore and check into Henry Beard's "Latin for all occasions" (various publishers, 1990 to 2004). It's a riot. Gives you real Latin phrases to use when shopping, during boring business meetings, as football cheers, in movie reviews, and so on.]
my new motto....would make a nice t-shirt
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
I thought it said "don't let boasters grind you down". I was just thinking how profound that advice was, when I realized what it really said XD
Anyhow, still good advice to live your life by... don't let anyone shove you down.
Aut tace aut dicere meliora silentio.
If I remember correctly, 'Don't let the bastards grind you down' is the favourite saying of Arthur Seaton, the hero of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Keith Waterhouse. Don't think he would have known it in Latin.
But he probably wouldn't have written it 'u', either.
Honoured to be called upon as the fo(u)nt of all knowledge – but you solved it anyway!
Eric Partridge (Dictionary of Catch Phrases) gives it as ‘illegitimis non carborundum’, which would be fairly good Latin for ‘let there not be a grinding-down by the bastards’. He says British Army WWII ‘chiefly among officers’ and thinks he knows which Oxford classical scholar might have invented it.
Some British politician got the sack a few years ago for accepting a gift from a ‘business associate’ – a pocket watch with this legend inscribed on it.
Didn’t work for him then.
Btw – Salvator Rosa’s motto means ‘If you ain’t got anything to say, STFU’. Always good advice in my opinion.
I didn't remember correctly... It's by Alan Sillitoe, not Keith Waterhouse.
Triste est omne animal post coitum (praeter mulierem gallumque).
i love the toasters!
i wonder if maybe this phrase is what the person got out ot the art of living book. i'm not familiar with it but the title makes it seem like 180 pages to say...
well, don't let the bastards grind u down.
There are shirts out there with a form of this phrase!!
http://www.cafepress.com/buy/latin/-/pv_design
(sorry, it's super long)
search at Cafepress.com, if the link doesn't work.
I had a professor who referred to bastards trying to grind one down as “Bastardic-Influence”: “The less Bastardic-Influence in one’s life, the better.”
I think I’ll send him this Find…
http://home.eol.ca/~freemason/lodge/
I wonder if this is the finder?
My hubby, his name is Salvatore, or SAM for short, is from Naples, Italy and he ALWAYS says this phrase!!! Not in english, either.
Wild...
Also, @ MONA- I've lived in Pickering, as well!!!
Really cool!
Small world...
Only let legitimates grind you down.
I prefer the saying I saw on a t-shirt I should have bought: "You say potato, I say fuck you"
This is my coworker's favorite phrase. I think I've heard it a hundred times. Funny to see it here. :)
cool, holly. I lived at the end of liverpool rd.
I LOVE this one.
I don't know why, but I do.
Looking at this find again, do you know what bugs me? This person went through the trouble to write this out, in Latin, in cursive, print the translation, but could not be bothered with the 'y' and 'o' in the word YOU. I'm not grammar police, just sayin.
I live in Penticton, does that count?
Terrie you forgot the G on saying. (hee hee. couldn't resist.)
swimm, if I were some kind of grammar fuzz, I actually forgot the apostrophe, it's that whole quotes, period, period, quotes, apostrophe, period. I don't know, it never looks right to me.
I am so curious: Moffat, did you read any of "The Bedside Book of the Art of Living"? Does Illegitimi non carborundum sum it up, or did it offer any other advice?
For Lars:
Don't let Starbucks grind ur coffee.
Where's Hotmom? He's a Freemason!
Senor Salvator Rosa,
I understood just enough of you last post to wake me up.
My friend from high school used to always love that quote. She had it engraved on her class ring. She died the night before graduation. Everytime I hear that quote I think of her. She was a really great person.
Dee Snider, singer for '80s pop metallers Twisted Sister, has a tattoo of that phrase (the Latin version) on his arm.
&dudley - Great trivia!
On another, having two finds a day is kind of complex for simple me! I hardly have enough chance to comment on one.
Maybe they're just a U2 fan...
http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/U2/Acrobat.ht
Lance Calzones: Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?
Lance:
'Every animal is sad afer intercourse (except the woman and the rooster).'
Attributed to Galen the physician, c. 104-193 AD.
The translator has to say 'rooster' because if one said 'cock' you would get quite the wrong idea.
(Calm down, man! Throw a bucket of water over yourself.)
Deanna,
Love the reference to A Handmaid's Tale. What an amazing book. In the county where I teach (Brevard County, FL), that is the only book that is officially banned; a teacher can be fired for having it available in her classroom. I wonder if that's because of the atypical sexual content or the attack on fundamentalist Christianity?
@Sal: sounds like your sad Dr. Galen was a regular Dr. Do-little.
@Nurse Trixie: Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.
Pickering! Like Colonel Pickering!
love this find.
what a sad story, Emily.
Love the find, and how it was a plus-find. I'm also curious whether finder read the book, and what finder found out?
My fave use of the phrase:
Nil illegitimo carborundum is a maxim credited to the philosopher Didactylos in his famous 'Meditations', in Terry Pratchett's Small Gods
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett
for night:
don't let your 16-year-old beginning driver grind ur gears.
In The Handmaid's Tale it is spelled "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" and it it revealed to be joke latin, written in a schoolboy's textbook. Another joke conjugation from the same book included "pim pis pit, pimus pistis pants"
@Emily, the story of your friend who died before graduation reminded me of a friend of mine who died about six months after we graduated from College. Her name was Tree.
The only Latin phrase I can think of right now is : Deus Ex Machina, literally meaning god from the machine. A term from literature, that comes from the Greeks. In Greek plays a mechanized "god" would be lowered from above the stage at an opportune moment to resolve a difficult situation. So whenever the hero finds a way out of an impossible situation, that's Deus Ex Machina, when the cowboy's buddy shoots
through the hangman's rope saving the cowboy's life, that's Deus Ex Machina, when the characters stumble upon the key that will open the locked door, that's Deus Ex Machina.
@Lars: have you got one of those? My sympathies if so. Try Preference by Loreal for the gray hair. You're worth it.
@ night. i have a 17 and an 18. and i kept the gray. very distinguished.
@Lars: mine are 17 and 12. I'm covering mine now, with more gray to come. Men are lucky, gray looks distinguished. Just looks drab on me. (You are a man, right?)
dawn in PDX, did you know that Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with alzheimers?
"Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down" was the title of an album by the legendary NY Ska Band the "Toasters"
Oh my god! I have this tattooed on my hip! That's awesome. It's the best advice I've ever been given.
This is the quote from The Handmaid's Tale. Read it if you haven't, it's brilliant and especially relevant right now.