I’d like to translate the phrase “unknown matter” in to Latin. Ideally, this would be a parallel construction to the phrase “Terra Incognita” meaning “unknown land”. Two questions:
First, the online Latin dictionaries I’ve read seem to indicate that “corpus” is the best translation for “matter” in this sense; is this correct?
Second, I know that Latin has all sorts of genders and cases to deal with, which I’m unfamiliar with. I assume that “Corpus Incognitus” is probably incorrect, but what would the proper phrase be?
I think the easiest translation would be res incognita, literally ‘unknown thing’ (that’s in the nominative case).
‘Corpus’ works here, for a physical substance, but it’s a stealthy neuter noun, so it would be ‘corpus incognitum’. This is for the nominative and accusative singular (roughly, the subject or direct object in a sentence).
If it is a more abstract kind of matter, materia or materies incognita would also work.
What case you use depends on what the phrase is doing in a sentence. If it’s the thing that’s performing the action represented by the verb (the subject of the sentence), then it goes in the nominative case, which is the most familiar one. If it’s being acted upon (the object of the sentence), it’d be in the accusative case. Those two are the most common, but there are others for other sentence roles.
This is a high jack but I didn’t want to open a new thread for a small question. Can anyone here give me a good translation for “Honored Dead”. The online dictionary says Honestus Exanimalis. Would this be accurate for a list of those fallen friends I’d like to commemorate?
Thanks for any help you may be able to give
