Teeth or Latin?

by Dave Bradley

Monday 29th October 2012 4:56 pm

Five years of bleeding Latin

Not even five minutes

on avoiding bleeding gums.

Nothing on plaque or bacteria attack,

Just dominus, domine, dominum.

Or amo, amas, amat.

A language in which you can't chat.

Nothing about drilling or filling.

I am not a polyphyodont

I needed info dental.

Latin drove me mental.

Trying to be like public schools

meant we weren't given tools

for the common round.

Now my teeth are unsound.

The root of much English is Latin

but the root of the tooth in my head

can hurt in

it.

And not just a bit.

What about enamel, what about pulp,

and nerves, and dentine and floss?

Teeth are such a loss.

Comments

Yvonne Brunton

Thu 1st Nov 2012 00:49

ah reminds me of the addage 'Nil illigitum carborundum'(don't let the B.......ds grind you down)
I'd not seen JC's version of the doggerel latin before. I know it as-:
Ceasar adsum iam forte
Brutus aderat
Caesar sic in omnibus
Brutus sic in at
Your poem is very timely Dave as a news item this week tells of some schools wanting to introduce oral hygiene training and having the students brush their teeth after every meal.

Anthony Emmerson

Wed 31st Oct 2012 16:18

From wiktionary:

This phrase, it seems, can be traced back to St. Jerome, who referred to it as a common saying in his introductory remarks to the Epistle to the Ephesians in his translation of the New Testament: "Equi donati dentes non inspiciuntur." A rather mangled literal translation would go something like this: "A given horse's teeth are not inspected."

Regards,
A.E.

Dave Bradley

Tue 30th Oct 2012 19:03

Thanks Anthony and John but I only got Grade 5 (despite 5 years of it) and that was 45 years ago....oh, hang on. Ah, nice one John, that just leaves Anthony's to work out. And thank you Steve.