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

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

So, uh, cleaned up: If testa means mollusc, you have:

"An oblong, flat, young mollusc with an angular end and sloping dorsal edges and longitudinal surface furrows, that are spaced out, and possibly ornamental."

???

[sea-of-tethys.livejournal.com]

Wait, doesn't testa mean head? So maybe they're saying it has an oblong head?

Do molluscs have heads?

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

No idea! I'm just winging it, here. I don't actually know any Latin. :p

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

In palaeontology 'test' means 'shell', which I'd always vaguely assumed came from the Latin ... so I was reading 'testa' to mean 'shell'... no idea if that's right or anything - I don't know any Latin either! No-one told me there'd be a linguistic component to my study!

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

I think I looked it up and confirmed that it was shell...

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

Score.

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

Most molluscs have heads, except bivalves, and this is describing a bivalve. So either Sowerby's Latin was way worse than he thought or testa has at least one other meaning ...