Thursday, April 5, 2012

Saepe malum facimus...

Here is today's Rhyming Distich, and here are some more posts with Rhyming Distichs. This one is from Zacher's Altfranzösische Sprichwörter. As an "illustration" of sorts, I cannot resist sharing the video for the "lesser of two weevils" scene from the film Master and Commander:

Saepe malum facimus minus, ut maiora cavere
Sic mala possimus; sapientes hoc docuere.



The vocabulary is keyed to the DCC Latin Vocabulary list. All the words in this poem are on that list!

caveo -ēre cāvī cautum: be on guard, beware
doceo -ēre -uī doctum: teach
facio facere fēcī factum: do, make
hic, haec, hoc: this; hōc, on this account
māior -ius: greater, older
malus -a -um: evil
minus -oris n.: a smaller number or amount, less
possum posse potuī: be able
saepe: often
sapiens -ntis: wise, sensible
sīc: in this manner, thus; sīc . . . ut, in the same way as
ut, uti: as (+ indic.); so that, with the result that (+ subj.)