Amo, Amas, Amat, and More (1985) by Eugene Ehrlich
Good Reads meta-data is 329 pages, rated 3.80 by 188 litizens.
Genre: Reference.
DNA: Latin.
Verdict: nihil obstat.
Tagline: ab initio.
Reading a history of Latin last week reminded me of this well-thumbed book on the desk reference shelf, and so, in an idle moment, I retrieved it. It is an alphabetical list of Latin tags. It has a detailed index for seekers of the right phrase.
It makes an important distinction, that partly justifies the exercise, between the translation of a Latin idiomatic phrase and its meaning. The example is ab asino lanam, literally ‘wool from an ass.’ Ehrlich renders it equivalent to the English idiom, ‘blood from a stone.’ The meaning is that the impossible cannot be done. That is a salutary reminder that some of those magisterial Latin tags come from the barnyard.
The cover boasts an introduction by William F. Buckley, Jr. What wise and witty things might this über maven offer to those of us who do not have the good fortunate to be him? Hmm, 0 is the answer. It runs to just over a page and is mostly about his favourite subject, himself. What a surprise.
Considering that the book has been in print for 40 years, I expected more raters on Good Reads. The WorldCat lists in 1445 libraries in 13 editions. By contrast Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin is found in 800 libraries.