"Don't let the bastards get you down!" 1945 (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Laurence Horn]

On May 21, 2012, at 12:10 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:

> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> Yale DicModProv ["YBQ" is a much better acronym . . . .] has a 1952 cite
> of a 1949 quote.
>
> Portland _Oregonian_ 19 Mar 1945 p 4 col 7
> "City Club Latin scholars got a kick out of a story Dean Edmund Wright
> of Harvard business school told the other day.  It seems a certain union
> grew so prosperous it decided it need an official seal, so the committee
> on heraldry got busy and brought in a beauty with an arm and hammer in
> one corner, a pretty girl in another, etc.  Then the members thought it
> needed a Latin motto.  Nobody knew Latin, except one guy, and he mulled
> it over a week, then came in with this:
> Illigiterata non Carborundum.

"illigiterata"?  even odder than "illegitimati"!  (Doesn't seem to relate to actual bustards, since their Latin name is Otididae; curiously, a bustard is originally a bistarde/oustarde, where "ous" < avis and "tarde" is what is looks like, so a tardy bird.)

LH

> That one stuck the City club scholars and they asked the dean for the
> translation.  "Don't let the bustards grind you down," was the answer."
>
>
> I wonder who bowdlerized "bastards" into "bustards" -- someone at the
> newspaper, or Dean Wright?
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org