Talk:Tripalium

Evidence
This word does not appear in Lewis and Short: is it real? Diomedea Exulans (talk) 09:15, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Lewis and Short is just classical Latin. From the cited Language Log post, an OED extract: "held by Romanic scholars generally to represent a late pop.L. or Com. Rom. *trepāliāre, deriv. of trepālium (582 A.D. in Du Cange), an instrument or engine of torture (prob. f. L. trēs, tria three + pālus stake, being so named from its structure)". The Language Log post goes into a fair bit more detail (although they don't fully get to the bottom of the matter). Kingdon (talk) 20:30, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Literal versus Figurative Translation of "fiery animal"
At the time of my writing, the Wikipedia page on the Tripalium explain that it was used to restrain "fiery animals". "fiery animals" is a very literal translation. Fire is associated with angry emotion and violent behavior. Also, bestial behavior or animal-like behavior was historically associated with angry emotion and violent behavior. A more useful translation might be "violent men or women"

The natural positioning of a the legs of a horse, the legs of an oxe, or the legs of a cow would preclude livestock from being restrained with a Tripalium.

Men and women exhibiting symptoms of a violent episode as part of mental illness were restrained on a Tripalium. 50.205.174.220 (talk) 22:00, 16 March 2024 (UTC)