"noli illegitimi carborundum" meaning in All languages combined

See noli illegitimi carborundum on Wiktionary

Phrase [English]

Etymology: Humorous pseudo-Latinism, from noli (“do not permit”) [singular] and illegitimi (“bastards”) [in the wrong grammatical case] and from the Latinate brand name Carborundum for a silicon carbide abrasive. The phrase is similar to the real Latin phrase nil desperandum (“do not despair”, literally “nothing to be despaired of”), which would be known to many English speakers. The -rundum ending of carborundum recalls the word desperandum, although such a gerundive suffix makes no sense for this phrase. This form of the saying was popularized in English by the US general "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell during World War II, reputed to have been taught it by British army intelligence. It later became the motto for the 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, who displayed it as a sign in his senatorial office. The plural form nolite te bastardes carborundum was popularized by Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale and its subsequent TV adaptation. Etymology templates: {{pseudo-loan|en|la|nocap=1}} pseudo-Latinism, {{m|la|noli||do not permit}} noli (“do not permit”), {{m|la|illegitimus|illegitimi|bastards}} illegitimi (“bastards”), {{m|en|Carborundum}} Carborundum, {{m|en|nil desperandum||do not despair|lit=nothing to be despaired of}} nil desperandum (“do not despair”, literally “nothing to be despaired of”), {{m|la|desperandum}} desperandum Head templates: {{head|en|phrase|head=noli illegitimi carborundum}} noli illegitimi carborundum
  1. (humorous) Don't let the bastards grind you down Wikipedia link: Illegitimi non carborundum Tags: humorous Synonyms: illegitimi non carborundum, nolite te bastardes carborundum
    Sense id: en-noli_illegitimi_carborundum-en-phrase-YB2qa0fp Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English pseudo-loans from Latin

Download JSON data for noli illegitimi carborundum meaning in All languages combined (2.8kB)

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      "word": "nolite te bastardes carborundum"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (1d5a7d1 and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.