veni navati vico

jimbabwe

New Member

So this sentence was printed on my school's swim team's sweaters. They claim that it means "I came, I swam, I conquered."
I'm not an expert, but isn't I conquered "vici"?
According to google translate, "vico" means "icing," which while delicious, does not make sense...
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Yes, you are right, "I conquered" is vici.

I don't know where Google Translate got the idea that vico meant "icing", though, but then Google Translate is known to be hopeless at Latin.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
does vico mean anything?
It could mean basically "for a village" or "by means of a village", lol.

Actually, I've just realized there's another mistake, unless that's just a typo from you: navati should be natavi.
 

Iáson

Cívis Illústris

  • Civis Illustris

It could be ablative or dative of vícus, 'village, hamlet, street'.

(Sorry, ninja'd).
 

jimbabwe

New Member

It could mean basically "for a village" or "by means of a village", lol.

Actually, I've just realized there's another mistake, unless that's just a typo from you: navati should be natavi.
I'm going to try to get a picture of the shirt - it says navati. I guess they figured no one would know any better...
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Perhaps they initially got the correct version somewhere, but it got badly typoed at some point in the process...
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
It is. Concerning vico at least, on my keyboard the I and the O are next to each other, so if one of the people involved in providing or transmitting the phrase or creating the t-shirt had the same type of keyboard, well a mistyping of O for I could easily have happened at some point. The navati typo for natavi is less evident, but well, someone may just have had a slight fit of dyslexia. All in all, they were rather unfortunate, lol.
 

Iáson

Cívis Illústris

  • Civis Illustris

návátí, incidentally, is from the past participle of návó, 'accomplish with zeal'.

So I suppose as a whole the statement means 'I came, for the village of the thing accomplished with zeal'. Or similar.
 

AoM

nulli numeri

  • Civis Illustris

Also, I would have used navi instead of natavi to keep the disyllabic consistency.
 
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