lanarius - wool-worker
One of last week's Latin words was lanarius. It may not surprise you, but I wanted to find out exactly what a "wool-worker" was supposed to do, and so I've spent far too long on the 'net trying to find out exactly what a lanarius did.
The typical translation seems to be "you know, the person who does stuff with wool". An alternative - in an old English-Latin dictionary - was "wool-draper", probably using "draper" in the sense of "fabric seller". Eventually it turned out that the suffix "-arius" did in fact signify "person who does stuff with...".
The English-Latin dictionary also had a translation for woosted: woosted being the old form of "worsted", the spinning term. The Latin it suggested was "lana subtilior contexta", which when translated back into English is "wool finely/simply woven/connected". Not being a spinner, I don't know whether that is a reasonable description of worsted - perhaps some of my readers know?
My investigations also led me to a phrase from Pliny - "lanae et per se coactae vestem faciunt"
If you search out where it came from (Pliny's Natural History, Book LXXII, a copy here,) the whole sentance reads:
"lanae et per se coactae vestem faciunt et, si addatur acetum, etiam ferro resistunt, immo vero etiam ignibus novissimo sui purgamento"
I'm inclined to translate this:
"Wools and forces-it-against-itself makes clothing and, if bound with vinegar, they even resist iron-swords, but truly as well, the newest way of cleaning them is by fires."
If you are an RPGer, you will recognise cloth armour in that description, and if you are into knitting, you will recognise the burn-test for checking whether something is wool or not.
Pliny has more about sheep, but translating that will wait until I know more Latin words.
By the way, day's blog post is brought to you by my Latin TMA - the tutor called it "an excellent start", and I'm generally feeling smug.
