Bad Latin Tattoos: E pluribus...Aw Fuck It

Over at Tales of a Wayward Classicist, a grad student working on his PhD wrote a fabulously informative rant about the prolific and oft wrong Latin tattoo.

Having previously been the proud owner of a bad Latin tattoo (since covered up), I of course take great joy at mocking the other people who made the same mistake.

Harker breaks the tattoos up into 3 categories:

1. Traditional, quoted good Latin - Carpe Diem, Odi et Amo,Alis Volat Suis, etc.

2. Dog Latin, largely ‘incorrect’ but in wide use - Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, etc.

3. Absolute fucking gibberish

My favorites of course, are the absolute fucking gibberish.

The moral of this story? Never ever use an online translator for your tattoo, regardless of the language. Last time I checked, “of” wasn’t a Latin word…

For more extra special misspelled crap tattoos, check out this Huffington Post feature. To quote one of the fantastic works of art pictured there, it’s a “Beautiful Tradgedy.”

~ by K. Ritcheson on January 28, 2010.