| Title: | The Joy of Lex |
| Notice: | A Notes File even your grammar could love |
| Moderator: | THEBAY::SYSTEM |
| Created: | Fri Feb 28 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Mon Jun 02 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1192 |
| Total number of notes: | 42769 |
I have had a lot of fun with word squares - arrays of words that read the same left to right as top to bottom. My favorite: N I C E I R O N C O R D E N D S (a neat electrician?)
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 269.1 | Daddy of them all | ECLAIR::GOODENOUGH | Jeff Goodenough, IPG Reading-UK | Wed Nov 05 1986 08:03 | 9 |
Famous Latin one:
S A T O R the ploughman
A R E P O Arepo
T E N E T holds
O P E R A (of his work)
R O T A S the wheels [Translation not
guaranteed]
This one reads ALL ways!
| |||||
| 269.2 | Well, One of 'Em, Anyway | INK::KALLIS | Support Hallowe'en | Wed Nov 05 1986 09:20 | 17 |
Re .1:
That one was used as a charm agai nst witches; they weren't supposed
to be able to stay in the same room with it (though the few witches
I've met don't seem bothered by it). It was also supposed to aid
in firefighting (you cast plates with it inscribed on it into the
fire).
A nother translation of it by the occultist McGregor Mathers makes
it "The creator [sator], slow-moving [arepo], maintains [tenet]
His creations [opera] as vortices [rotas]." Most people don't agree
with that translation.
There are others of that sort, equally diffucult/impossible to
translate satisfactorily.
Steve Kallis, Jr.
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| 269.3 | witchcraft not required | MODEL::YARBROUGH | Thu Nov 06 1986 11:57 | 9 | |
I like to make them around the names of people, especially where the other words make some sort of sense. Like A L A N L O V E A V I S N E S T (Maybe he takes girls out in rented cars?) | |||||
| 269.4 | Another look at the square in .1 | DSSDEV::ROBINSON | Sat Nov 08 1986 15:58 | 35 | |
Re .1, I've found an interesting insight into that perfect square.
This is from Eerdmans' HANDBOOK TO THE HISTORY OF
CHRISTIANITY:
It contains, jumbled up, the words PATER NOSTER ('Our
Father', the first two words of the Lord's prayer in
Latin), together with A and O (the Greek letters 'alpha'
and 'omega', used of God, for example in Revelation).
So, the square could be re-arranged like this:
A
P
A
T
E
R
A PATERNOSTER O
O
S
T
E
R
O
In the new testament, Jesus Christ is often refered to as the
"Alpha and the Omega" ('alpha' is the 1st and 'omega' is the last
letter in the Greek alphabet, respectively). This refers to
Jesus being the beginning (the creator) of and the end (the
culmination) of everything in the universe. This may be why
some folks used it to scare off witches.
Bill
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