Re: Non vitae sed scholae discimus

Philippe Caquant scripsit:

> Is there a verb "to disquote" ?
"To misquote".  There are many misquotations in English that have become
fixed parts of the language: for example, "to gild the lily", meaning
to add decoration to what is already beautiful, is a misquotation of
Shakespeare's line "to gild refin�d gold, to paint the lily".  A related
phenomenon is quoting something verbatim et literatim, but in a sense
quite different from the original: to take another Shakespeare example,
most people who say "more honored in the breach [i.e. disregard] than in
the observance" use it to mean "more often honored", but in the original
context it plainly means "more *appropriately* honored".

> And my answer is: because we instinctively understand that this sentence
> is normative, not descriptive. So, why do we feel so ? Again, my answer
> is: because usually, such sentences, especially when signed by a famous
> Latin author, are rather considered as precepts.
Quite sound psychology, I think.

> (As to the word "schola", a glose in Russian I found in some book
> talks about "philosophical cabinets",
German _Wunderkammer_; what it may be called in French I don't know.
This was an 18th-century box with a glass door used for the display
of curious natural objects (often fossils); "philosophical" here means
"scientific".

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