exima pulchritudine feminam. Une deblesse et enchanteress

A

Anonymous

Guest

You are right the second one seems to be in French. Interesting combination, Latin & French. Where are these phrases coming from?

I cannot find 'exima' in my dictionary... Maybe it should've been eximia
 
M

Messalina

New Member

Location:
Ancient Rome
I think you are right Aula, it should be eximia (select, excellent, extraordinary).

My guess would be: extraordinary beautiful woman.
BUT: this is a sentence fragment. It is being said in an accusative case, i.e., 'woman' is not the subject of this sentence, but probably an indirect object.

E.g., I knew that this extraordinary beautiful woman had a dog.

Or something like this.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest

Thank you very much for your help.

The quote (Latin/French) is from Anya Seton book Katherine.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest

Messalina dixit:
I think you are right Aula, it should be eximia (select, excellent, extraordinary).

My guess would be: extraordinary beautiful woman.
BUT: this is a sentence fragment. It is being said in an accusative case, i.e., 'woman' is not the subject of this sentence, but probably an indirect object.

E.g., I knew that this extraordinary beautiful woman had a dog.

Or something like this.
Click to expand...
It could originally be from the old French which sometimes mixes Latin and French. Your translation is probably right, but will add that it must then be the direct object; if the woman was the indirect object 'for' or 'to' could have been implicit. However, the Latin sentence should then have been in the dative.

If the writer had shaky grammar, he may have meant to imply the preposition - i.e. '(for) an extraordinarily beautiful woman. A devil-ess and an enchantress.'

The accusative form often survives the nominative because of the ending -m.
 
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