April 03, 2008

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.
Kelsey in NOLA
This is really helpful advice for me right now. Love it.
+ April 03, 2008 12:01 AM +
Ian in an inn in IN
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.
+ April 03, 2008 12:09 AM +
CuriousKat in LG WI
Good Morning, Jonathan! What does that really say?
+ April 03, 2008 12:09 AM +
minphx in (the) west
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")
+ April 03, 2008 12:10 AM +
minphx in (the) west
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".
+ April 03, 2008 12:15 AM +
Deanna in Maryland
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".
+ April 03, 2008 12:51 AM +
Deanna in Maryland
sorry i didn't mean to repeat what minphx in the west said.
+ April 03, 2008 12:52 AM +
Jen in on the internet
I'm pretty sure she clears that up in the handmaids tale doesnt she?
+ April 03, 2008 01:58 AM +
orinoco womble in wimbledon burrow
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.
+ April 03, 2008 03:40 AM +
Will in the Hill
DLTBGYD is also a song by the Toasters...
+ April 03, 2008 04:00 AM +
mona lisa in the louvre
hey, iused to live in pickering.. too cool.
+ April 03, 2008 05:16 AM +
Stranger in Love
Here they come..... Here they come....
+ April 03, 2008 05:51 AM +
Librarian in the woodwork
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.]
+ April 03, 2008 06:41 AM +
chillin
my new motto....would make a nice t-shirt
+ April 03, 2008 06:47 AM +
Freonz freak in g hallucinations
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)

+ April 03, 2008 06:51 AM +
Beth in a tizzy
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.
+ April 03, 2008 07:35 AM +
Salvator Rosa in the National Gallery
Aut tace aut dicere meliora silentio.
+ April 03, 2008 07:45 AM +
Lindsey in UK
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.

+ April 03, 2008 07:53 AM +
Jonathan in late again
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.
+ April 03, 2008 07:56 AM +
Lindsey, hanging head in shame
I didn't remember correctly... It's by Alan Sillitoe, not Keith Waterhouse.
+ April 03, 2008 07:58 AM +
Salvator Rosa in bed
Triste est omne animal post coitum (praeter mulierem gallumque).
+ April 03, 2008 08:00 AM +
for all in tents and purposes
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.

+ April 03, 2008 08:09 AM +
MB in St. Paul
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.

+ April 03, 2008 08:34 AM +
Monkeywrench in The Works
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…


+ April 03, 2008 09:06 AM +
Candy in a wrapper
http://home.eol.ca/~freemason/lodge/
I wonder if this is the finder?
+ April 03, 2008 09:10 AM +
Holly the Homemaker in Toronto

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...
+ April 03, 2008 09:14 AM +
Holly the Homemaker in Toronto
Also, @ MONA- I've lived in Pickering, as well!!!

Really cool!

Small world...
+ April 03, 2008 09:15 AM +
Terrie-Is-So-Very in totally-unique-ville
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"
+ April 03, 2008 09:24 AM +
L
This is my coworker's favorite phrase. I think I've heard it a hundred times. Funny to see it here. :)
+ April 03, 2008 09:26 AM +
mona lisa in a cookieless louvre
cool, holly. I lived at the end of liverpool rd.
+ April 03, 2008 09:27 AM +
Crystal in Cracktown Selling Donuts For a Fix
I LOVE this one.
I don't know why, but I do.
+ April 03, 2008 09:41 AM +
Terrie-Is-So-Very in totally-unique-ville
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.
+ April 03, 2008 09:50 AM +
Louise in BC, Canada
I live in Penticton, does that count?
+ April 03, 2008 09:53 AM +
swimm in g coolwhip
Terrie you forgot the G on saying. (hee hee. couldn't resist.)
+ April 03, 2008 09:53 AM +
Terrie-Is-So-Very in totally-unique-ville
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.
+ April 03, 2008 10:00 AM +
nadine in bed, pondering the art of not getting out
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?
+ April 03, 2008 10:03 AM +
Night in gale
For Lars:
Don't let Starbucks grind ur coffee.
+ April 03, 2008 10:14 AM +
Goog in g the Finder cuz it's oh so much fun
Where's Hotmom? He's a Freemason!
+ April 03, 2008 10:18 AM +
Lance Pants in a trance
Senor Salvator Rosa,
I understood just enough of you last post to wake me up.
+ April 03, 2008 10:24 AM +
Emily in Missouri
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.
+ April 03, 2008 10:24 AM +
Dudley Morris in Ottawa
Dee Snider, singer for '80s pop metallers Twisted Sister, has a tattoo of that phrase (the Latin version) on his arm.
+ April 03, 2008 10:34 AM +
nadine
&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.
+ April 03, 2008 10:55 AM +
Emergency in your pants
Maybe they're just a U2 fan...

http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/U2/Acrobat.ht
+ April 03, 2008 10:57 AM +
Nurse Trixie in flagrante delicto
Lance Calzones: Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?
+ April 03, 2008 11:04 AM +
Salvator's translator in dictionarium latinum
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.)
+ April 03, 2008 11:08 AM +
Pamplona in the Sun
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?
+ April 03, 2008 11:09 AM +
Lance Pants in a trance, soaked like Flash Dance
@Sal: sounds like your sad Dr. Galen was a regular Dr. Do-little.
+ April 03, 2008 11:24 AM +
Lance Pants in a trance
@Nurse Trixie: Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.

+ April 03, 2008 11:33 AM +
Christina in Illinois
Pickering! Like Colonel Pickering!
+ April 03, 2008 11:49 AM +
desikitteh in irc land
love this find.
+ April 03, 2008 12:04 PM +
suspended in reykjavík
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?
+ April 03, 2008 12:25 PM +
Dawn in PDX
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
+ April 03, 2008 12:33 PM +
Ook
"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
+ April 03, 2008 12:56 PM +
lars in all my forms in the nwc?
for night:
don't let your 16-year-old beginning driver grind ur gears.
+ April 03, 2008 02:45 PM +
DaveTheWave in New York
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"
+ April 03, 2008 03:54 PM +
Smallbear in poking his head out of the cave
@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.
+ April 03, 2008 06:36 PM +
Night in gale
@Lars: have you got one of those? My sympathies if so. Try Preference by Loreal for the gray hair. You're worth it.
+ April 03, 2008 06:57 PM +
lars in all my forms in the nwc?
@ night. i have a 17 and an 18. and i kept the gray. very distinguished.
+ April 03, 2008 08:43 PM +
Night in gale
@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?)
+ April 03, 2008 10:19 PM +
mona lisa in the louvre
dawn in PDX, did you know that Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with alzheimers?
+ April 04, 2008 05:25 AM +
matt in dc
"Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down" was the title of an album by the legendary NY Ska Band the "Toasters"
+ April 04, 2008 08:45 PM +
Beth in Missouri
Oh my god! I have this tattooed on my hip! That's awesome. It's the best advice I've ever been given.
+ April 06, 2008 11:28 AM +
Cari in Illinois
This is the quote from The Handmaid's Tale. Read it if you haven't, it's brilliant and especially relevant right now.
+ September 29, 2008 12:06 PM +

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