Referring to:
https://adckl.blogspot.com/2026/05/180526-clothes-washing-1-transcription.html
https://www.facebook.com/reel/3452819201540306
Every word has its own story, its origins, and its ‘journey’
through multiple languages.
(1) sāpō, sāpōnis [3/m]: soap
(2) māchina, -ae [1/f]: machine
Unless people really have nothing better to do with their
time, I doubt anybody wishes to know how the Ancient Egyptians would have
expressed washing machine in hieroglyphics. We do, however, want to know how it
may be expressed in Latin.
This has been mentioned several times before: Latin is a
language still studied by thousands of people, and one way of reinforcing
concepts is actively to speak and use it. Magister Andrews is not discussing
the Battle of Cannae, but washing clothes; in other words, he personalises the
language and relates it to the modern world.
When practising the language in this way — and many posts in
the group do precisely that — we move into the realm of Neo-Latin: using Latin
to express concepts that did not exist in the ancient world.
For centuries - long after it was the exclusive property of
the Romans – Latin continued expanding its vocabulary, and it did so in a
variety of ways.
(1) sāpō, sāpōnis [3/m]
Soap: a word that made its way as far as Indonesia and the
Malay Peninsula – sabun, possibly via Arabic [ṣābūn] or
Portuguese [sabão]; the latter is feasible since the town of Melaka in Southern
Malaysia was a Portuguese colony. However, the etymology ‘gurus’ state that it
is ‘ultimately from Latin sāpō’. Well, yes, but not quite: the
Latin noun sāpō was itself a borrowing from Germanic.
“…though it denoted not a detergent, but a sort of pomade
used for colouring the hair a light brown. It was made with goat's tallow and
ashes, and was sold in balls, in which form it was imported by the Romans from
Germany and Gaul, and used to bleach the hair.” (Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers
Dictionary of Classical Antiquities)
Eventually, of course, the word acquired the meaning we
understand today. Here is an Old English example; Monks sworn to vows of
silence were given guides to sign language:
Ðonne þu sapan abban wille þonne gnid þu
þinne handa to gædere
When you want soap, rub your hands together.
Thus, in Neo-Latin, we see semantic shift: the
word acquires a new and broader meaning.
10.06.25: blunt razors, blood-letting and glowing walnut
shells; Comenius LXXVI; at the barber’s shop [5]
https://adckl.blogspot.com/2025/03/100625-blunt-razors-blood-letting-and.html
https://www.facebook.com/groups/latinforstarters/posts/808719628405974
(2) māchina, -ae [1/f]: machine
“A machine, i.e. any artificial contrivance for performing
work; an engine, fabric, frame, scaffolding, staging, easel, warlike engine,
military machine, etc.” (Lewis & Short). Therefore, it is a perfectly
legitimate word to refer to any form of machine.
Image #1 shows part of an illustration reconstructing the
Globe Theatre where Shakespeare’s plays were first performed. [T] is the hut
containing the “machine” used to lower gods onto the stage, from which the
term deus ex machinā is derived i.e. the plot device whereby a
seemingly hopeless crisis is suddenly resolved by, for example, the unexpected
intervention of a god or a convenient (although unlikely) event.
Although Magister Andrews does not use it, there is a
specific Neo-Latin term for ‘washing machine’:
māchina lavātōria
https://neolatinlexicon.org/latin/washing_machine/
Image #2: also listed in ‘First Thousand Words in Latin’
(Usborne)
The adjective lavātōrius, -a, -um is
itself a coinage: it did not exist in Classical Latin, but was logically
created from Mediaeval / Late Latin lavātōrium, -ī [2/n]:
washroom.
The Neo-Latin Lexicon provides an extensive list of
Neo-Latin vocabulary, though one should bear in mind that there may be multiple
ways of expressing a concept, some of which may not be universally accepted or
entirely accurate.
https://neolatinlexicon.org/latin/
