The full text is 'Volo vestri argentum. Volo decoctum is'.
I know that the first sentence means 'I want your money'.
A blogger (Stephen Pollard) has written that Gordon Brown's motto should be: 'Volo vestri argentum. Volo decoctum is'. So perhaps the second sentence means, as one respondent has suggested: 'I want his (emotional/ political) bankruptcy'/ destruction/demise? A reference to his, now ousted, rival, Tony Blair?
The second sentence is very cryptic and open to a number of interpretations. But I think this one might be likely. Thanks to you all for helping me to work it out!
2007-06-28 12:17:53 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous in Education & Reference ➔ Words & Wordplay
The sentences are pretty poor Latin.
Argentum does mean 'money' -it's in accusative case, direct object of the verb 'volo', meaning "I want'. But the 'vestri' is wrong. It does mean 'your', but it's in genitive case - it should be in the same case as 'argentum' - it should be 'vestrum'
In the second sentence, 'volo' is the same, but 'decoctum' as a noun has the meaning 'decoction' - the verb form can be used to mean 'suffer loss, go bankrupt', but I can find no reference to that ever being applied to the noun. The 'is' is just plain wrong. It means 'he' as the subject of a sentence, not 'his' at all.
Whoever put this into Latin did not know the language, and it would be almost impossible to guess what the writer really meant.
2007-06-28 16:03:48 · answer #1 · answered by dollhaus 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Hi, is there a question I can help answer?
2007-06-28 12:47:17 · answer #2 · answered by MW 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋