Words are weapons - arm yourself.

[Purple]

Hello,

I'm here to ask for assistance with translating a phrase that I happened to see written as graffiti some time ago. It stuck with me, and since I happen to love reading and writing, I would really love to get a tattoo of it . However, (in absolute honesty) I'm a bit silly (?) about it I suppose as I would very much want it in Latin rather than in English or my native tounge (which is Swedish), and so I googled away, and just as I expected found little to nothing in terms of pure results, but eventually found my way here.

And so I humbly ask for any assistance anyone could offer!

The entire phrase is in the subject box, however the dash could be removed for a comma or whatever really. The context is of course rather obvious. The pen is as mighty as the sword, and all that.

Anyway, on the off chance that someone could take some time and help me I decided to post this here.

I hope I didn't break any rules in doing so, it's rather late and my eyes won't stay open ^^

Thanks, and good night

/Purple

 

[Matthaeus]

maybe we could do verba sunt arma -- arma te iis
for a bit of word play

 

[Imperfacundus]

Sounds a bit too english to me.

Succinge te uerbis, quae tibi telis sunt was what came to my mind.

 

[Matthaeus]

Yep, that's better.

 

[Purple]

Alright, sounds good to me (but what do I know right ^^)

Thanks a lot you guys, I appreciate it

 

[Godmy]

Sorry, but "telis"? It sounds to me a little bit slavic: "esse" with instrumental case (here quasi-instrumental). Or an analogy (or attraction) to "verbis".

...quae tibi tela sunt / quae tibi telorum loco sunt. (imo)

(My belief is that latin in these cases works just strictly with nominatives, which is sometimes a source of confussion, but still the reality.)

 

[Nikolaos]

It's a double dative construction.

 

[Godmy]

Well I confess I was not considering that (my fault) but I still cannot find any example (maybe you can) using "telis" as second dative (as we have bono, frugi, usui, cordi... etc) and I am not sure how much liberty we can take in this case...

(and that may be the reason why I haven't considered it)

But ok. I parsed this wrong.