Re: Latin question: "titillandus"

At 9:40 pm +0100 8/3/02, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>En réponse à Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>:
[snip]

>> Indeed, until your recent emails I had known only 'chatouiller' (to
>> tickle)
>> in French.  It's the only word my grandsons use; I've never heard them
>> use
>> 'titiller'.
>>
>
>Actually, "chatouiller" and "titiller" are two different things. "Titiller" is
>not really "to tickle".
Right - so "chatouiller" is the physical 'tickle' ("titillare" has that
meaning in Latin).

>"Titiller" you can do for instance using a feather on
>the nose of somebody's sleeping.
We'd still use 'tickle' for that because it still a physical act.

>More annoying than tickling in my
>opinion. "titiller" has a connotation of annoyance, or restlessness in the
>metaphorical meaning.
Interesting - IME 'titillate' doesn't have any connotation of annoyance in
English. It has the idea of 'arousal', particularly for flirtatious or
amorous purposes.  In the jokes of comedians I've heard, there's often been
innuendo from a supposed connexion with the colloquial "tit" = 'female
breast'.

>> >Strange, I thought it
>> >was more an argot formation...
>>
>> Nope - strictly learned  :)
>>
>
>Well, then it was debased, because nowadays it's absolutely no learned word!
>You'll never hear it in the mouth of a scholar!
Ah, when I say learned, I wasn't necessarily meaning serious, minded
academics - simply introduced by someone or some persons who were familiar
with Latin.  I don't know when 'titiller' entered French - it may have come
through student argot.

Some borrowings from Latin have certainly been made humorously.  I suppose
the most obvious is "tandem" to mean 'horses harnessed one behind the
other' and thence a bicycle for two (or more) where the riders sit one
behind the other.  'Tandem' in Latin means only "at length", "at last" (en
fin).  But in English 'at length' could also mean 'one behind the other'.
It was originally coined by university students (in the 18th or 19th cent.
IIRC).

It's like when I greet my wife with "Je suis dos" meaning "Je suis revenu"
through a punning use of "dos" = 'back'.

The small room in one's house which was known as the 'lavatory' when I was
young, but is now commonly called the 'toilet' here (that term was
considered very pretensious & affected when I was young - how fashions
change) and over the other side of the pond is (too) often misleadingly
called the 'bathroom' (as John Cowan IRC observed, we Brits make the
unreasonable assumption that a bathroom actually contains a bath!) - that
small room is not uncommonly called the "cloak room" in Britain
(particularly in estate agents' details).  But you'll never see any cloaks
in them nor, more often than not, anywhere where a cloak could be hung even
if you had one. So why the "cloak room".  Some anonymous humorist was
punning "cloak" with Latin 'cloaca' = "sewer'.

I'm sure there are other examples of educated people having humor ;)

>>
>> According to Harrap's English-French/ French-English dictionary, it's:
>> "ne réveillez pas le chat qui dort"
>>
>
>That's the one!
>
>> ...which sounds a bit feeble, unless French cats are particularly fierce
>>  ;)
>>
>
>Have you ever woken up a sleeping cat?
Nope.

>Don't do that without your body covered
>completely with 20cm of clothing! :))
Right - thanks for the advice  :)

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                     [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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