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Is there a site that will translate Latin? I never took Latin, and while I can often get the gist of phrases, it would be nice to have a site that could fill in the gaping holes in my vocabulary. I came across the italicised phrase below, and while I I know that there are many people who post here capable of translating it for me, I have no intention of asking for a translation every time I get stuck. A web-based translator would be a great asset for the semi-literate, it could be said to be "pro utilate hominem."

Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit.


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Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit.

As it happens, I found the translation. I was only missing the verb - I had successfully discerned that "a wise man doesn't 'mingit' against the wind", and just needed to have "mingit" translated. That's why a site like babelfish would come in handy, to supply key words that are unfamiliar. If nothing like it exists, would anyone care to rectify that?



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as long as you bring it up, retromingent is a very odd word derived from Latin.

http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/rst.htm#retromingent

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retromingent

How does one do that? And please don't say, "with great difficulty" or "very carefully"


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a wise man doesn't 'mingit' against the wind",

Having not taken any Latin, but living in a generation where one's peers thrive on unconspicuously crude jokes and quotes, I'm guessing that 'mingit' means urinate.


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"mingit"

I wonder if that would help with a current popular Scottish slang word - "minging" - usually pronounced mingin', apparantly means smelly or dirty but applied to anything unpleasant.

The only reference in a dictionary I can find is in Websters which says it means minced which doesn't work at all for current usage.



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>I wonder if that would help with a current popular Scottish slang word - "minging" - usually pronounced mingin', apparantly means smelly or dirty but applied to anything unpleasant<

Do either mingit or mingin relate to mingy? I always assumed that it came from 'mean' and 'stingy' (and that's what Cambridge on-line said - thanks for bringing the listing back up tsuwm!), but now I'm not so sure


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M-W says "perhaps" a blend of mean and stingy -- so they don't know (or aren't saying ;)



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Is there a site that will translate Latin?


My colleague (who took a first in Classics) has provided me with the following:-
Perseus project at Tufts is the best source - there's a mirror at Oxford: http://perseus.csad.ox.ac.uk/

A version of Lewis & Short is available at http://perseus.csad.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/resolveform?lang=Latin

More general lexica and text tools at http://perseus.csad.ox.ac.uk/lexica.html

(the oxford site is sometimes down - to get to the original substitute tufts.edu for csad.ox.ac.uk. There's also a mirror in Berlin http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de)

Happy translating!

(just realised this is my 100th post. I'm really glad that it is an attempt to be constructive and helpful, rather my usual outpouring of pomposity, poor puns and poking fun at others)



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my 100th post


Congratulations!

(Am I the first to have cent this message?)


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