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Nimium Eruditionis Habeo
Jun. 21st, 2019 11:55 pmThere are shirts that say, “Si haec tunicam legere poses, nimium eruditionis habes,” Latin for “If you can read this shirt, you have an excess of erudition.”
I thought I had solved Thursday’s Scrabblegram in the Washington Post, with one of the words being “fleafur.” A few centuries ago, rich people carried around pelts, with the idea that fleas would prefer the pelts, called fleafurs, to their own bodies. On Friday, I was able to see the official answers to the previous day’s puzzle, and it was supposed to be “fearful.”
Of course, that makes sense. It reminds me of an occasion years ago, when I solved a somewhat different kind of word puzzle with “arval,” and found out the next day that the word was supposed to be “larva.”
When you see hoofprints, think horses, not zebras — except that they sometimes do use odd or obscure words.
I thought I had solved Thursday’s Scrabblegram in the Washington Post, with one of the words being “fleafur.” A few centuries ago, rich people carried around pelts, with the idea that fleas would prefer the pelts, called fleafurs, to their own bodies. On Friday, I was able to see the official answers to the previous day’s puzzle, and it was supposed to be “fearful.”
Of course, that makes sense. It reminds me of an occasion years ago, when I solved a somewhat different kind of word puzzle with “arval,” and found out the next day that the word was supposed to be “larva.”
When you see hoofprints, think horses, not zebras — except that they sometimes do use odd or obscure words.
