"Quaererere"?

Callaina

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I thought that it would be fun to talk about some words that we find clever, funny, amusing, or for some other reason interesting.

I like:

quaererere - the imperfect passive subjunctive second person singular of quaero is quite amusing.

Which, when conjugated in the second-person singular imperfect passive subjunctive, forms the delightful tongue-twister quaererere. :D
(Though it doesn't appear to be attested. Hmmm, I wonder why? ;) )



That one seems to be a typo for quaerere.

Ditto.
(This doesn't seem quite right in "Reading Latin", but I can't think of a better subforum, so it's going here.)

Does anyone know of an actual attested (deliberate) use of quaererere? I understand why authors would be reluctant to use it, both for considerations of diction and meter, but you'd think someone would have done it to sound amusing, if nothing else.
 

Pacifica

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I don't remember coming across it, and it gets no hits on PHI.

It may have been deliberately avoided, or not. There are many forms that aren't attested, often simply because they didn't happen to be needed in the texts that have come down to us.
 
B

Bitmap

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a bit of a late night effort ... I hope I didn't get anything wrong in those hendecasyllabics :/ The hercule I threw in there might be an echo of the occasional swear word I uttered when trying to put this together.

quid si, docta puella, quaererere,
num nosses repetentibus cadentes
voces (hercule!) syllabis? cavendum
esset ne quererere te inscientem!
quodvis finge! pudore ne erubesce!
exempli dare verba nil vetabit!
 

Callaina

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Very nice!! :D
 

Callaina

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This all reminds me of another silly combination of sounds, from one of Pacifica's poetic translations:

Undique aquae, undique aquae, torrescunt sed tabulae omnes.
Undique aquae, undique aquae, nec gutta est potilis ulla.
 
 

Matthaeus

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Hmm sounds like Rhyme of the ancient mariner? Am I on the right track here?
 

Callaina

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Haha, yep.
 

Pacifica

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quid si, docta puella, quaererere,
num nosses
Is quaero attested with a double accusative? One usually quaerit a question ab aliquo rather than aliquem.
 
B

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Is quaero attested with a double accusative? One usually quaerit a question ab aliquo rather than aliquem.

That's how I know it as well ... I actually tried to look for the accusative construction before writing it ... but I might have done it a bit superficially ... I've found examples of passive + indirect question

https://latin.packhum.org/loc/474/5/228/827-846@1#228
https://latin.packhum.org/loc/119/10/12/281-302@1#12

... but I realise those are impersonal constructions, so it's quite a stretch :/
 
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