In English: He is wise who thinks twice.
As those of you who are regular readers of this blog will notice, I've moved the address over to the Blogger.com hosting service at blogspot.com:
http://AudioLatinProverbs.blogspot.com
I've done this in order to take advantage of the many great new blogging features that are available only with the blogging software associated with Blogger's hosted space. I've tried to clean up any mess I left behind as a result of changing the address. My apologies for the inconvenience if you are having to change any of your bookmarks or RSS feeds.
Meanwhile, I chose today's proverb in order to bolster my decision! I was reluctant to change simply because it is a lot of trouble, and the old system was working well enough... but as today's saying advises us, it's always good to think things over, re-putare, "to think back, think again." So, that's what I did!
As I was going through the rather tedious process of moving the blog and trying to make sure I left no broken links behind me, I definitely had plenty of time to think over what I was doing. Even though I was listening to a delightful book on tape (the wonderful science fiction novel Hominids, by Robert Sawyer), the process was time-consuming and a bit anxiety-producing as well, since I definitely have a horror of link rot. Yet as I went through my old directories file by file to redirect the old addresses I discovered to my horror two directories that I had never created, filled with hundreds of files: one called XANAX and the other called CIALIS. Yes, the evil hackers had somehow managed to create a directory in my webspace without my even knowing it. It's a bit like sweeeping out the garage and picking up an old newspaper or bag in order to throw it away, only to find a swarm of cockroaches underneath. Ugh! So while for several years I liked the idea of hosting the blog on my own server, I've thought it over (reputavi!) and decided that the advantages could not outweigh such the disadvantage of having to wage war against the forces of evil, the Xanax and Cialis spammers, and their ilk! I'll let Google and Blogger.com handle that for me from now on, thank you.
Given that the Latin word reputare obviously leads to the English word "reputation," I should probably quickly say something about that etymology here as well. Latin did have a noun, reputatio, which meant "thinking over." Yet by the time "reputation" entered in the English language in the Middle Ages, it already had the sense in which we use it today of the public estimate of a person's character. Chaucer uses it already with this meaning in the late 14th century. Moreover, the form "repute" is already in use in the 16th century, as in several examples from Shakespeare, e.g., "Let them be men of good repute and carriage." This English noun, "repute," is derived from the verb "to repute." (Compare the similar use of "dispute" as both noun and verb in English.)
So, hoping your day has been one of good repute (in both the Latin and the English senses of the word!), here is today's proverb read out loud:
2014. Sapit qui reputat.
The number here is the number for this proverb in Latin Via Proverbs: 4000 Proverbs, Mottoes and Sayings for Students of Latin.
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