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Posted By: Hydra Method of murder - 11/17/06 10:15 AM
What Latin phrase might be used for "method of murder" on the model of "modus operandi"?
Posted By: Faldage Re: Method of murder - 11/17/06 10:49 AM
Allowing for the fact that one doesn't necessarily just plug in words, I'd suggest modus caedis.
Posted By: Myridon Re: Method of murder - 11/17/06 04:31 PM
When I took Latin, our favorite verb for "to kill" was interficere because it's literally "to make/do between" - killing someone by slicing them up. Cannibals have a modus interfectionis.
Posted By: zmjezhd Re: Method of murder - 11/17/06 04:44 PM
Why not go for a parallel style and use the gerund (verbal noun)? Modus interficiendi.
Posted By: Myridon Re: Method of murder - 11/17/06 05:54 PM
Because it's been about 24 years and the noun was in the dictionary and the gerund wasn't and I could vaguely recall that facere is irregular and there's something weird about oper...

Now I've done my homework, I was confusing facere with its irregular passive cousin fieri and operari is a deponent verb. It turns out neither of those those things matter in forming the gerund so, yes, I agree "modus interficiendi" is better.
Posted By: ParkinT Re: Method of murder - 11/17/06 09:21 PM
Ethod-may of Urder-may ?
Posted By: Hydra Re: Method of murder - 11/18/06 07:34 AM
What about "modus interfeci"? Is that ungrammatical? It gets about 22 Google-hits, all webpages in Latin; while "modus interficiendi" gets 0 G-hits (not that that necessarily means anything).
Posted By: zmjezhd Re: murthering syntax - 11/18/06 02:32 PM
What about "modus interfeci"? Is that ungrammatical?

Well, it's hard to understand. Modus is the singular nominative form of a noun, and interfeci is the first person singular active present perfect form of a verb. It could mean something like: I, the manner, have killed (it), but it doesn't mean the manner of killing.

All the pages which Google finds are German and offline. Scanning at them they don't seem to make any sense in Latin. Most of the words are in their lemmatized dictionary citation form. It looks more like lorem ipsum greeked text used for some kind of page-ranking scheme.

[Minor typo correction and added link.]
Posted By: Hydra Re: murthering syntax - 11/19/06 07:26 AM
Thanks for clearing that up.
Posted By: Hydra Re: murthering syntax - 11/19/06 08:07 AM
modus interficiendi

One more thing: Is that a hard "c" (FEK-Y) or soft (FESH-Y)?
Posted By: Faldage Re: murthering syntax - 11/19/06 12:17 PM
Depends on what kind Latin you're speaking. In Classical Latin it would be a K sound, in Italianate Church Latin it would be a CH sound, in German Church Latin a TS sound and in (God forbid) USn legal Latin the whole thing would probably be pronounced MOHD iss inter fih SIGN die.
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