Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Obesus Etruscus
Ugo Bardi, "The impending global collapse: will it end the obesity epidemic?" The Seneca Effect (May 22, 2022):
I don't think that Livy said it, but Catullus (39.11) certainly did. I don't have access to David W. Packard, A Concordance to Livy, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). Also, obesus in Latin is an auto-antonym, a word that can mean the opposite of itself. It can mean both lean and fat, according to Lewis and Short.
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Livy spoke of the obesus etruscus ('fat Etruscan') as an insult to a people he considered lazy and decadent.
Labels: auto-antonyms, typographical and other errors
