Iamus alwaysus misunderstoodus whenus Ispeakus inLatinus.
A bit of a hijack, but I’ve never understood why in English we use a Latin expression for the years since Christ’s birth, while we use an English term for the pre-Christ years (“Before Christ”). I’ve noticed that other languages don’t use the Latin at all–Italian, for instance, uses “aC” (“avanti Cristo,” same meaning as in English: “Before Christ”) for the pre-Christ years and “dC” (“dopo Cristo,” meaning “After Christ”) for the “A.D.” years.
Of course, we could always follow the lead of Jewish historians in saying “B.C.E.” and “C.E.” (“Before Common Era” and “Common Era”). That way we’re at least consistent in the language of our abbreviations (as well as kind of removing the Christian overtones of BC and AD).
Ah, that would explain why the Christ statue at my church has a falcon’s head…
[Not to mention that the Egyptian “trinity” would more properly be Osiris, Isis, and Horus–kind of silly to include Set in there, when he’s the one who killed Osiris and hacked up his body. But I guess Jack Chick couldn’t think of another Egyptian god whose name began with an “S”]
I’ll bet he was confusing stat with stet, “let it stand,” used in editing to mean “ignore the editing marks and set the copy as originally written.” Questionable Latin background, indeed. I hope this person didn’t actually WORK in medicine . .
Someone once asked me why the Latin word “qed” didn’t have a u. I had to think about it before I figured out he was talking about “Q.E.D.”