Sunday, June 26, 2011

Overheard in the Hallway:

Me: "I feel the need... the need to sneed. Sneed isn't a word, but it should be. What's it mean?"

RX: "It's the past tense of the verb 'to snee'."

Me: "Ah. So, 'I snee; you snee; he/she/it snees; we..."

RX: "...have been sneed. It's from the Latin snevius, which is the act of separating fly poop from small grains of finely-ground black spices."

Me: "That was traditionally done by slave girls from the eastern Mediterranean, known as Sneviatrixes."

RX: "Ah, but by the later Republic, it had become a respected, and often well-paid profession."

Me: "Indeed. Tacitus even claimed that the favorite mistress of the emperor Claudius was reputed to have been a former Sneviatrix."
So I was being grammatically incorrect. I should have said "I feel the need... the need to have sneed."

And with that, I'm off to the grocery store. (And yes, that's fairly typical for Roseholme Cottage dialog...)

20 comments:

TenMile said...

Not bad, not bad at all, for a late rising oversleeper professional.

Guffaw in AZ said...

What DO you ladies first consume upon arising?
I WANT some!

atlharp said...

Sneeding sounds like something that happens at a men's room in South Beach, and no..... penicillin cannot treat it!

Anonymous said...

Sneed is not a verb, but a noun.

Sneed is a political columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. She has been sneeding for nearly 40 years.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sneed/

Sneedin' Buddy

Tirno said...

Isn't the feminine plural Sneviatrices?

Tam said...

Since I like to back winners, I took German instead of Latin in high school(besides, blitzkrieg scans better than fulminabelli), so my grammar might be a little off...

Unknown said...

Sneeding? We seem to have an overabundance of folks who have chosen that as a career path.

My grammar was a bit off, but we didn't want to put her in a nursing home...

Dr. Coyote said...

At least it's not a need for a thneed. BTW, you do have a seat cover for your bicycle right?

Robert Langham said...

My friend, Dr. Loyd Sneed is a proper gentleman in every way.

Mark Alger said...

That cover for the bicycle seat, BTW, is called a snood.

M

P.S. OK. No. Not really, but it sounded good.

TW: Prentic. What an apprentic does. Of course.

Anonymous said...

Sneeds are what you plnant in the sprning.

Hank

Old NFO said...

LOL- The coffee must have REALLY been good this morning!

Borepatch said...

By a very strange coincidence, I just finished Tacitus Agricola/Germania last night. Didn't see anything in it about snee, but it might be in the Annals.

All joking aside, there's a non-trivial chance that Catalus wrote some doggerel verse about something like this.

Well played.

Borepatch said...

Thinking about it, could "snee" be a bad translation (say, by someone with Latin skillz on the same level as mine) of the plural snii (pronounced "sn-ee-ee")?

This might actually make sense if you're talking about lots of little Ancient world poop balls.

WV: "shicu". I really don't want to go there.

Gewehr98 said...

Now I'm wondering about the Sneetches and their activities...

Robert said...

On second thought, let's not visit Camalot. 'Tis a silly place.

wv: Cytin. A footnote on lyrics of rap songs.

Matt G said...

Tirno beat me to it.

Gewehr98 said...

Speaking of enriching one's vocabulary, I learned what "snoodling" was today via The Urban Dictionary. I was dared to look it up, and now I regret doing so.

Ewww...

Evan Price said...

Perhaps you should John Steed, instead.

phlegmfatale said...

That little exchange, Missy, is part and parcel of why I have such fits of mentis envy when I think of the conversations in your house.

Smart AND cute. :)