So a bunch of tactless rubes decided to try and ruin everyone’s day by standing outside the stadium gates with giant, graphic posters of aborted feti. They also had a plane fly over during the procession with a banner that read “Congratulations Graduates! Defend the unborn!” It went away, much to my relief, only to return reading “Choose life- not Hillary and abortion!” (Bill was the commencement speaker- good message, not as eloquent as I’d hoped).
Hasn’t everyone pretty much made up their mind? Do these phelpsian fruitcakes really think that they will change policy?
And then there was the guy with the sign that listed the top ten reasons why Bill Clinton shouldn’t be addressing the graduates. I didn’t stop to read them all, but the ones I did catch were laughable.
Pathetic.
And despite their efforts, everyone in AA had a great day- the sun chased away some early light rain, and every alcohol container was verified for its volume, and all the blunts and j’s took care of the rest.
Actually, the Latin nominative plural form “feti” is a recognized alternative to the more usual English “fetuses”, and is frequently used in scientific and medical documents like this one (pdf):
Nope, there’s a second-declension form (mostly adjectival) as well as the fourth-declension form. The second-declension plural “feti” is, as I noted, sometimes used in English as an alternative to “fetuses”.
Prolly because most folks just assume, incorrectly, that any Latin word ending in “-us” has its plural ending in “-i”. I don’t disagree that “fetuses” is the more usual plural form in English or that “feti” is a rather clumsy borrowing from Latin; I was just noting that the English plural “feti” is not actually erroneous.
Ah, why bother? Seen any other good misappropriated loan words from classical languages lately?
(My personal anti-favorite is “monokini” for the bottom half of a bikini bathing suit. I don’t mind at all that the first syllable of the linguistically-unrelated Micronesian word “bikini” is interpreted as though it were the Latin prefix “bi”; in fact, I think that’s adorable. What drives me crazy is that the anonymous neologizer decided to replace the (pseudo-) Latin prefix “bi” in “bikini” with the Greek prefix “mono”! Aaagh! Obviously, the garment in question ought to be called a “unikini”!)
AA is for Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located. As in
I’m going to Ann Arbor, I’ll be one more horses’ ass,
I used to be intelligent, but that’s all in the past.
So paste a tail on my nose and point me towards the grass,
I’m going to Ann Arbor I’ll be one more horses’ ass!
Why yes, I did once work for Michigan State University, why do you ask?
We had some of these fundie morons show up on campus on a regular basis when I was in college. They’d have all these signs with horrible misspellings and grammar flubs and would claim the moral high road when they could not cite or quote their religious text properly.
We also had bizarro fundies bring their kids to hold the mutilated fetus posters for them while they were protesting and “demonstrating” with a baby doll and a knife as to what “these abortionists do” on a regular basis.
Seen any other good misappropriated loan words from classical languages lately?
