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Latin Translation of "Crazy Quilt" - Redux

I enjoy and appreciate the way you all are answering Dr. Smith's > question.

Me too. The discussion has now pretty much petered out on all three groups. It ran longest on alt.language.latin, which also yielded the best (IMHO) answer/guess. As Nightmist so aptly put it:

The problem with [L]atin is it varies a bit from school to school and > purpose to purpose. Modern school (medical, horticultural, and so on) > [L]atin is differen from [C]hurch [L]atin is different from "classical" > [L]atin is different from medival [L]atin etc.

This was affirmed, in a way, over in alt.language.latin by Johannes Patruus:

In cases like this a definitive verdict is probably unattainable and we > have to settle for approximations.

That's pretty much what I was expecting:

I'm not necessarily looking for a > literal translation. Rather, what the common person-on-the-via Appia > might have called a crazy quilt (or what they might call it today if > Latin weren't "dead").

As far as the quilt part goes, accord> ... perhaps we should be looking in a different direction for a better

descriptive of the *intent* of "crazy"; I'm reasonably convinced that > whoever chose that particular word was being cute/humorous, working in > the vernacular, going for multiple meanings, [and/or] pizzazz. "Crazy quilt" > sounds a whole lot more attention-grabbing, and rolls off the tongue > much easier, than "irregular-patch quilt" or "made-from-leftovers > quilt", or other literal albeit better descriptive terms.

But in common Latin usage, a descriptive term is indeed very likely what would have been used. Going back to the translation site, after trying several adjectives to get their colloquial meanings, the two best choices I found were:

inaequalis, inaequale, inaequalior -or -us, inaequalissimus -a -um ADJ [XXXBO] uneven; unequal; not smooth/level (surface); irregular (shape); patchy/ variable

and

inordinatus, inordinata, inordinatum ADJ [XXXCO] disordered, not arranged; irregular; disorderly, not legal; occurring irregularly; in confusion; W:not in formation (troops);

Which leaves us with two candidates: cento inaequalis or cento inordinatus

Patruus confirms:

Both of the above are correct in form, and perhaps as close to being as > accurate in meaning as we are going to get. If you need the plurals, they > are centones inaequales and centones inordinati.

For my own answer (the one I was looking for when I began this saga), I've settled on the former - cento inaequalis - YMMV. Another idea that sprang from my original thought (to embroider the Latin phrase on my crazy quilt) is to have a block with *several* or *all* of the suggested phrases embroidered on it! Let the peons figure THAT one out! 8^D

If anyone's interested, I encourage you to visit the other discussion groups and review the threads; there's a lot of interesting stuff there, and I learned a LOT.

Dr. Smith Oh, the pain... THE PAIN...

Reply to
Dr. Zachary Smith
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Thanks for the update! Interesting stuff...

--Heidi

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On Jul 31, 1:22=A0pm, "Dr. Zachary Smith" wrote: (snipped)

Reply to
heidi (was rabbit2b)

Dr smith here is Linda`s answer to your letter which i forwarded to her . ==================

Dear Dr. Smith, I'm a quilter and a scholar, including Latin, Virgil and co.- just love the Georgics. Quilters, both male and female don't have to be unlettered, or subject to weird mental states. We're just people who use cloth, needle and thread as our closest to hand medium. With respect,Linda.

Reply to
mirjam

Sorry, but I have no idea what "letter" you're referring to or in what context to put the above.

Reply to
Dr. Zachary Smith

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