Friday, January 04, 2019
I Suck
Matthew Parsons, "Interview: Simone Buckley, Fello," Buying Business Travel (May 4, 2018):
See also J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982; rpt. 1993), pp. 130-132.
Hat tip: A reader, who took the following photograph of a billboard erected by the company:
From Eric Thomson:
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Fello may be a new name for the business travel industry, but its history goes back decades.As a Latin word, fello's history goes back millennia. Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, s.v.:
fello, āvi, 1, v. a., to suck (ante-class. and poet.).Alfred Ernout and Alfred Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, 4th ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 2001), p. 224:
I. Lit.: lac humanum, Varr. ap. NON. 113, 14: lupam, ID. ib. 242, 33.—
II. Transf. obsc., MART. 2, 50, 1 al.; AUS. Epigr. 71, 7.
See also J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982; rpt. 1993), pp. 130-132.
Hat tip: A reader, who took the following photograph of a billboard erected by the company:
From Eric Thomson:
Perhaps it isn't such cack-handed branding after all. There's some etymological cryptocurrency there, as PIE *dhehrl-o- has given suck not only to fello but also to fetus, filius, femina, fecundus, felix and, not least, faenus — 'the proceeds of capital lent out; gain, profit, advantage' (Lewis & Short) — filthy lucre in other words.
