Disputatio:Oetsius

Vicimedia Communia non continat has imagines. Non sunt imagines liberae. - Golradir 20:16, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Glacier

So, Iustine, mollis glacialis is 'glacier'? Cassell's didn't have a word for 'glacier', so I translated it simply as 'ice'. Cassell's doesn't have a Latin noun mollis either. You weren't trying for moles, -is 'a shapeless mass', were you? IacobusAmor 05:14, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was. Had I meant mollis "soft" I would surely have said "molli" ;) Mollis glacialis is, I think, Berard's coining, or at any rate it's conventiculum Latin. --Iustinus 05:23, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Moles glacialis seems good enough. BTW, Pitkäranta gives "glaciarium", an obvious back-formation. --Neander 10:35, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that makes sense too. Maybe we should start that article just as an excuse to list those sources? Though as usual for the case of Stephanus, I would probably end up citing Vita Nostra which is still published only unofficially. --Iustinus 16:04, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Was he really "in a glacier"?

Should we really be saying (with en:) that he was found "in a glacier"? According to the definition in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, an essential trait of a glacier is that it be moving, but wasn't Oetzi found where he fell?—which means he didn't move with a glacier, so he can't have been in a glacier? So just plain 'ice' might have been a better term? ¶ And why didn't the old Romans have a word for 'glacier'? They certainly knew about the alps, which some famous Romans actually saw. Did they just use a word for 'ice'? or what? IacobusAmor 13:14, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, how exactly do we know he was found exactly where he fell? My guess, though, would be that this is simply an illustration of the term "glacial pace." In any case I am willing to give en's choice of wording the benefit of the doubt. They surely have a least as many pedants there as here. --Iustinus 16:04, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the idea is that if he'd been in the glacier (as would happen, for example, if he'd fallen into a crevasse, or the movement of the ice had swept him up), then his remains would likely have been crushed and spread far & wide, never to be reunited. ¶ In any case, one asks again: why didn't the old Romans have a word for 'glacier'? Or, perhaps from a more correct perspective: why should we assume that whatever the old Romans called a glacier isn't good enough for us? IacobusAmor 17:44, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know that glaciers are ever as such described (c.f. lava). If we find a locus classicus, I'm guessing it would use just glacies. But "glacier" is a scientific terminus technicus. You know, like Canis lupus :p --Iustinus 19:48, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]