Domino Vobiscom.
What does it mean?
-Scott rough_collie@dog.com

Spotty biscuit.

Dominus vobiscum
The Lord be with you

Scott, Marianna is entirely correct, but you may be mystified how you get that out of two words. This is a contracted expression; in full, it would be, "Dominus sit cum vobis" = (the) Lord be with you (plural). There are no articles, either definite or indefinite, in Latin, so "the" is always understood and has to be added in translation to English.

Dominus vobiscum (God be with you) was the greeting when Sister met Sister or Student in my convent school. Those were the pre-Vatican II days when Latin was more generally in use by RC clergy.
The reply was/is
Et cum spiritu tuo -- if my spelling is correct.
It means : And with your spirit (with you)
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Sister's use of Latin
I hope that the good sisters did not say "Dominus vobiscum" to a single Sister or student. As I noted to Scott, "vobis" is plural. To one person, you would say "Dominus tecum."

In those long ago days "Sisters" always travelled in pairs!
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Dominus sit cum vobis

Not so much a contraction; Bobyb's offering would be a more modern construction (relatively speaking). The tecum or vobiscum was an older construction from the days when the lexeme cum was a postposition (as opposed to preposition). It was retained as a fossil in a few constructions of which this is one.

In those long ago days "Sisters" always travelled in pairs!

And one nun was with the other nun so that each nun could see that the other nun didn't get nun ...

A perfect example of why Sisters did not refer to themselves as nuns and didn't particularly like being called nuns. But if someone did ... well you were immediately forgiven.
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immediately forgiven

"No offence, Sister"

"None taken!"

immediately forgiven
"No offence, Sister"
"None taken!"

Arrrgh!
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"None taken!"

I guess if they're taken, it is always in pairs...

What's with this whoosis terminology, anyway? Do they really not like being called nuns? If not, how did that get started? Was it a nunce word?

But don’t nuns live in nunneries? Seems like a pretty common word.

In French we only call them sisters and they live in couvents (convents).

In Europe, nuns are so often nurses, that "Sister" is very often a proper word for "nurse". One of my German language instructors who had to be hospitalized in Boston wondered why the nurses were disagreeable towards him. He found out later they thought he was being "fresh" when he called them "Sister".

The Sisters I knew lived in convents. What can I say.

Maybe that nun/nunery thing had someting to do with Shakespearian English, (Get thee to a nunery) and then too, there was Henry VIII and the The Great Upset.
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"Nun" is the correct usage for female religious as a group. "Sister" seems to be a peculiarly Roman Catholic usage, although I could be wrong. I spent some time at the Anglican nunnery in Christchurch during a holiday there when I was twelve or thirteen. They called each other "Sister" but they called themselves "nuns" as a group. I've had a soft spot for Anglican nuns ever since because they were very kind, although as I understand it they're almost a thing of the past now.

If you want the lowdown on female religious, read "Nuns" by Marcelle Bernstein. She's a Jewess who is/was a journalist and got interested in female religious' place in the world today. Given that she had no denominational axe to grind, she came up with what I thought was a very well-researched and sympathetic examination of women religious of all faiths and levels of recognition by the parent churches. Well worth the read, even if you're not particularly interested in religion.

I went to Catholic school and the nuns there didn't much like being called nuns. (We were a little reluctant to call them nuns to their faces to see what their reaction was but we'd "heard" they didn't like it.) Plus, like belM says in French, they live in convents - again the "correct" word that I was taught.

but in Shakespeare's time "nunnery" was also a euphemism for a brothel. Shakespeare is full of ambiguities which were well understood by the contempory audience.

Rod Ward

but in Shakespeare's time "nunnery" was also a euphemism for a brothel. Shakespeare is full of ambiguities which were well understood by the contempory audience

Quite true. I found a page (which I forgot to bookmark) which listed a large number of such double-meanings in Elizabethan and Stuart times. And anyone who has watched Ken Russell's films will know that a nunnery was potentially both convent and brothel at the same time, at least in fifteenth century France ...

Mercy me!
Not something we heard about (1930s-40s) in my convent school!
No wonder Martin Luther had agita.
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