14 January 2013

"Viburnum pugna"


Retronaut has a gallery of eight representations of snowballs and snowball fights in Medieval art.  The image above (cropped) is attributed to Tacuinum Sanitatis (c. 1390-1400).

*the title is how Google Translate renders "snowball fight" into Latin.  I suspect it's wrong, but haven't come up with a correct term yet.  Someone out there can probably come up with a better one.

Via Neatorama.

3 comments:

  1. By separating the compound word and using Google Translate on each word individually....

    nix sphera compugno

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  2. You may say "Pugnicula pilarum nivearum".
    "Pugnicula" is a little fight. "Pilarum" is the genitive form of "pila", a ball to play games, and the adjective "niveus, a, um" means snowy (or besnowed ?).
    From Belgium,
    Alexis.

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  3. Viburnum is a botanical name for a snowball plant and 'pugnacious' means someone prone to fighting... I could get to an approximation of the meaning from the Latin (but I'm definitely not commenting as to its correctness here).

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