AD KALENDAS GRAECAS

I hear some of you groan, ‘no more Latin, please!’ But this is actually interesting and relevant. And besides, I read recently that the study of Latin in schools in the US is undergoing a revival. Good thing, considering that two-thirds of our English vocabulary derives directly or indirectly (the latter mostly via Romance languages) from Latin. So, if you have at least a passing acquaintance with Latin – and I confess that I don’t claim proficiency in the language – you can quickly discover the etymology of an English word and can probably make an intelligent guess about its meaning.

But now, back to the Kalendae (the case is the nominative plural; kalendas in the above phrase is the accusative plural). We are sometimes asked to do something for the other person. We may agree to do it, perhaps willingly, or maybe grudgingly, because it’s rude to say no. However, the work may or may not get done; you’re too busy, it doesn’t interest you, you forget about it, and so on. But what if you really don’t want to do it? Shouldn’t you just say so? But that is unfriendly. So why not say it with class. The Romans had a way of doing so by using the above phrase. But what does it mean?

You may know that before the empire, the Romans divided their months into different segments. Who doesn’t know about the Ides, and particularly the Ides of March, the anniversary of a brutal slaying (I know, bad pun)? Another was the Kalends. It was the first day of every month. The Latin alphabet did have the letter k, but it was not used much. It was replaced mostly by the letter c, pronounced as a k in classical Latin. In contrast, the Greek alphabet did have the letter k, known as kappa. But the Greeks did not have Kalends. So, if you said to person that you would do the work ad kalendas Graecas (on the Greek kalends), you were really saying that it would never be done.

Some Western European languages took their cue from that and adopted similar expressions. However, they employed saint’s days for the purpose. Only the saints were non-existent. Thus, for example, in Germany the fictitious saint is Sankt Nimmerlein; In France (and also in England) it is Saint Glinglin; and in the Netherlands, it is Sint Juttemis. So, a Dutch person who doesn’t plan to perform the requested work would say ‘op Sint Juttemis’, i.e., on Sint Juttemis (day)’. The word ‘day’, that is, the Saint’s day, is left unsaid but is understood.

So, if you really don’t plan to perform the work, you should say so in a classy way, using one of the above examples. Of course, professionals must keep their promises. But perhaps you are not actually breaking your promise if you are really saying, ‘I won’t do it’.

And our word calendar derives from kalends.

Albert’s Word of the Month

Depredation, n., often used in the plural, the action of plundering, pillaging, or despoiling, an instance of robbery or pillage.

L: depraedatio, from depraedat- the pa pple stem of depraedari, from de- + praedari to plunder.

‘The attorney for property’s depredations of the estate were flagitious in the extreme’.

And that requires me to define flagitious.

Flagitious, adj., extremely wicked, criminal, villainous

L: flagitiosus, shameful, disgraceful, infamous.

‘He is a flagitious scoundrel’.

The Ten Days of Christmas by Albert Oosterhoff  

I received one of those Christmas letters that people send round this time of year. I no longer read them because they always serve as a self-aggrandizing vehicle – “let me tell you about all the amazing things I, my spouse, kids, parents, and grandparents did this year. Am I being uncharitable? O fie!

But one item in this letter caught my attention. The writer declared that the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was used as a code during the time that practicing the Roman Catholic faith was forbidden in England (16th century to the 1840s). And the code supposedly taught the basic tenets of the faith to the children of the church. Thus, for example, 2 Turtle Doves stood for “the Old and New Testaments”, and 3 French Hens stood for “faith, hope, and charity”. You can look the whole thing up on the internet, though I don’t advise it. The story seemed extremely unlikely to me, so I did a little research (I seem to have some spare time for that these days).

Turns out that this entire theory, which is apparently making the rounds on social media these days, is complete and utter nonsense and has been debunked by experts in the history of carols and the history of music generally, and by many reference books.

I came across a quotation from one of Aesop’s fables (“The Gnat and the Bull”) the other day, which says, “the smaller the mind, the greater the conceit”. So apt. I wonder if it might, with some variation, apply also to people who believe only the fake news they read on the internet.