Anyone want to show off their leet latin skillz?

[highlyeccentric]

agenttrojie is faced with 19th century scientific texts, and consequently, 19th century dodgy scientific Latin. She's had a poke at her sentence, and I've had a poke at it armed with my dictionary, and we need help from someone who actually understands Latin:

It's a description of a species of mollusc. It reads:

'Testâ oblongâ, planisculâ, tenuisculâ, posticè angulatâ, margine postico dorsali declivi, superficie sulcis obtusis, remotis, longitudinalibus ornatâ'

which I surmise means something along the lines of 'Oblong shell, something about flat, SOMETHING, angular posterior, dorsoposterior margin SOMETHING' and then I get lost.

Here's what I could figure, in addition to Trojie's working-out:

* I can't get more than "flat" for planiscule - closest my dictionary has to offer is planus, adj., flat.

* Likewise "teniscula" beyond me, although I think it might be some kind of horrible abuse of 'tener' (tender, delicate, young, weak, effeminate or erotic), or possibly "tenius" (thin, fine, small shallow) ED: WAIT. Trojie said 'tenuiscula'. Sorry Mr 19th century for insulting your Latin.

* "Declivi" seems to be either "sloping" (adj "declivis") or "turned aside" (some form of the verb "declino"?), it would help if I could decline adjectives, but then I don't think this bloke could either, he seems to be adding "cule" to the ends of things at random.

* "Superficie" = ablative singular of "superficies", the most pertinent translation of which is "surface". I'm not entirely sure what the ablative does, but it's the right ending for singular feminine fifth declension nouns.
* "sulcis" appears to be the plural ablative of "sullcus" (furrow, trench, track). Two ablatives make an ablative absolute, yes? I have no idea what the possible implications of this are for the meaning of the sentence, though.
* Obtusis. I've never been taught adjectives, so I leave that up to someone else. There is, however "obtusus", which seems to mean "blunt". Or is it some form of the verb "obtundo", of which "obtusus" is also the past participle?

*"remotis", predictably, has something to do with "far" or "remote"

*Longditudinabulius is not going to be classical latin
* "Ornata" - furnished? dressed?

Comments

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

Reading what you've got there, I suspect the bit about 'margine postico dorsali declivi' might have something to do with the concave dorsoposterior margin most of these things have, maybe. Or maybe it's more describing it in terms of the fact that it's extended into a rostrum ... however since the illustration is also typically 19th century and thus an extremely lacking-in-detail line drawing, and I have no shell material to work from, working back from the illustration to the description isn't likely to be too helpful. Argh.