Dog Latin

Dog Latin or cod Latin is a phrase or jargon that imitates Latin, often by "translating" English words (or those of other languages) into Latin by conjugating or declining them as if they were Latin words. Dog Latin is usually a humorous device mocking scholarly seriousness. It can also mean a poor-quality attempt at writing genuine Latin.

History
Examples of this predate even Shakespeare, whose 1590s play, Love's Labour's Lost, includes a reference to dog Latin:

Thomas Jefferson mentioned dog Latin by name in 1815:

"Fifty-two volumes in folio, of the acta sanctorum, in dog-latin, would be a formidable enterprise to the most laborious German."

Examples

 * Illegitimi non carborundum, interpreted as "Don't let the bastards grind you down." Offred, the protagonist of the novel The Handmaid's Tale, finds a similar phrase scratched into the wall of her wardrobe: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
 * Semper ubi sub ubi is unintelligible as Latin, but translates word for word as 'always where under where', interpreted as 'always wear underwear'.
 * A once-common schoolboy doggerel which, though very poor Latin, would have done a tolerable job of reinforcing the rhythms of Latin hexameters:


 * Insofar as this specimen can be translated, it is as follows:


 * The meter uses Latin vowel quantities for the Latin parts, and to some extent follows English stress in the English parts.


 * Another variant has similar lines in a different order:


 * The meaning here is "The storm rose up and overturned the boat" and "Except for John Periwig", etc.


 * Another verse in similar vein, from Geoffrey Willans' Down with Skool, is:


 * which, when read aloud using traditional English pronunciation of Latin, sounds like the following:


 * but which means in Latin


 * The following spoof of legal Latin, in the fictional case of Daniel v Dishclout (from George Alexander Stevens' "Lecture on Heads", 1765), describes a kitchen:

"camera necessaria pro usus cookare, cum saucepannis, stewpannis, scullero, dressero, coalholo, stovis, smoak-jacko; pro roastandum, boilandum, fryandum, et plumpudding mixandum, pro turtle soupos, calve's-head-hashibus, cum calipee et calepashibus."


 * In English, this is:

"A necessary room for the purpose of cooking, with saucepans, stewpans, scullery, dresser, coalhole, stoves, smoke-jack; for roasting, boiling, frying, and mixing plum pudding, for turtle soups, calves'-head hashes, with calipee and calipashes."


 * In a similar vein, a humorous love song of 1782, the text of which is attributed to John O'Keefe, states:


 * The Red Green Show closes each episode with the recitation of the Possum Lodge motto, Quando omni flunkus moritati – which can be translated as "When all else fails, play dead". In one episode, some of the members break away to form the rival Salamander Lodge, whose motto is Quando omni flunkus terra retreatum ("When all else fails, climb under a rock").
 * Finnish death metal band Omnium Gatherum gets its name from 1500s era butchered Latin meaning "a hodgepodge of various things".
 * The title of death/folk metal Verbal Deception's debut album Aurum Aetus Piraticus is Dog Latin for "Golden Age of Piracy".
 * The songs of Era, a musical project by Eric Lévi, are usually in Latin-sounding gibberish.
 * The magazine name Atlas Obscura, while not wrong in and of itself, is misused Latin. In Latin, Atlas is the name of either the Greek giant, or the mountain range named after him, and does not refer to a collection of maps.
 * A running gag in the series of Looney Tunes cartoons starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner assigns different fake Dog Latin species names in each episode to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, i.e. "Eatibus Anythingus" and "Acceleratti Incredibilus". The actual Latin species names for the coyote and road runner were used in a 2003 episode of the series, The Whizzard of Ow.
 * The Warhammer 40,000 wargame universe makes frequent use of pseudo-Latin (which is referred to in-universe as 'High Gothic') in its product names and background material.