-------- Original Message --------
D. Barton Johnson wrote:
> From: Don Johnson
>
> Quite aside from the lines of inquiry suggested by Carolyn and
Jansy re
> Conmal, > ^^^
has anyone noticed the simple fact that the name consists of
CON, a French noun referring to an object with feminine meaning
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ,
followed by the phonetic redering of a French adjective derived
historically derived from the Latin word "masculus" meaning "male":
Any medievalist, and most Latinists, will recognize here the old
"grammatical "joke", "Dicite grammitice...", Tell me, grammarian
why is the word "cunnus" masculine, and the word "mentula"
feminine". This yields, like a minstrel show "responsus",
"Because a servant is named by/for his master" (prepositions in Latin
often have "ambiguous" meanings. No mean medieval scholar, and
a Cambridge one at that, Nabokov will have know this old "wheeze".
(One could test this on any Cambridge undergraduate in a field
dealing with Latin.
Or ought we to be "serious" and not entertain such puerile puns?
IOHANNIS
> "to study carefully", "to learn" plus MAL ("bad, badly")--perhaps
a
> reference to his pathetic command of English as witnessed by his
> Shakespeare translations.
>