{"id":801,"date":"2013-10-10T14:52:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T19:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=801"},"modified":"2013-10-10T16:05:07","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T21:05:07","slug":"walter-scott-anagrammatized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=801","title":{"rendered":"Walter Scott Anagrammatized"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laudator Temporis Acti<\/a> has an interesting post<\/a> on Sir Walter Scott’s library. If you haven’t already read it, go and do so before continuing.<\/p>\n

Done? OK, let’s continue.<\/p>\n

I was naturally curious about the anagram, wondering how Scott’s library motto, clausus tutus ero<\/em>, worked as “an anagram of his name in Latin”. It took a little while, but I eventually figured out how to equate the two. Quite a few adjustments are necessary, not least because Latin has no W:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. As “his name in Latin” implies, we must add -US to the end of both names. With four Us in the motto and none in the name, that’s an obvious first step. (Should we treat U and V as equivalent and make that -VS rather than -US? Yes: more on this below.)<\/li>\n
  2. With only two Ts in the motto and three in the name, we have to omit the second T in Scott, making the Latin ‘Scotus’, as in Duns Scotus, not ‘Scottus’. Whether ‘Scotus’ would have been pronounced with a long or short O, I do not know.<\/li>\n
  3. We cannot make Walter ‘Gualterius’, the usual Latin equivalent, because there’s no G in the motto, and we need two more Us. Instead, we must make the W – not allowed in Latin – into two Vs, as often seen in early texts of Shakespeare. This is where the V-U equivalence comes in: W may be called ‘double U’, but I’ve always seen it spelled double V when divided.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    To sum up, the only way I can see to make ‘Walter Scott’ and ‘clausus tutus ero’ anagrammatically equivalent is to spell them VVALTERVS SCOTVS and CLAVSVS TVTVS ERO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Laudator Temporis Acti has an interesting post on Sir Walter Scott’s library. If you haven’t already read it, go and do so before continuing. Done? OK, let’s continue. I was naturally curious about the anagram, wondering how Scott’s library motto, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[185,186,188,187,184],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-literature","tag-anagrams","tag-latin-mottos","tag-laudator-temporis-acti","tag-libraries","tag-walter-scott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}