The meaning of maiestas - a more direct ancestor of "majesty" than the AHD suggests, I think - is (from my Latin dictionary):

maiestas, maiestatis: Greatness, dignity, majesty, authority, grandeur. It also offers up crimen maiestas as meaning "high treason", although I've never heard of that one before!

What it does illustrate quite well is that "j" used to be "i" and should therefore, as I have always maintained (Gawd, it gets lonely up here!) be a vowel.



The idiot also known as Capfka ...