Monday, December 08, 2014
Dumb and Dumbest
Plautus, Bacchides 1087-1089 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):
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All the weakheads, thickheads, fatheads, mushrooms, idiots, drongos, cretins, wherever they are, were, or will be hereafter, all these I alone surpass by far in idiocy and stupid habits.I need a dictionary for the English as much as for the Latin. What is a drongo? Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., sense 3:
quiquomque ubi sunt, qui fuerunt quique futuri sunt posthac
stulti, stolidi, fatui, fungi, bardi, blenni, buccones,
solus ego omnis longe antideo
stultitia et moribus indoctis.
A simpleton, a stupid person; see also quot. 1942. Hence as adj., silly, foolish. Austral. slang....1942 A.G. Mitchell in Southerly Apr., Drongo, an R.A.A.F. recruit.
