Here you are: links to Dave’s book on Kindle, Word Myths:
http://www.amazon.com/Word-Myths-Debunking-Linguistic-ebook/dp/B002TQKS0A

and to mine, Dancing On Mara Dust priced at $1.23:
http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-On-Mara-Dust-ebook/dp/B005ZXEOD6

Both of them (at least I hope mine is) well-written, authoritative and informative. Mine will never be a blockbuster success (unless there’s one interested movie producer out there) but it’s a book that I’d promised I’d write one day about a time in an Africa so long gone that there’s nobody else left to tell it like it actually was.  It should appeal to anyone interested in either Africa, biography or pioneers. My anonymity is blown to shreds, but then it has been long before now.

The (now partially retired) South African director of the OED, Penny da Silva, told me she’d marked one or two words I used as possible citations for the dictionary in future.  What they are, I don’t know, but I suspect they’re South African usages.

PS Dave - I couldn’t see a Kindle price for your book so if I’ve put the wrong link in, please correct it and accept my apologies.

Hijacked enough or do you want a full-blown ad?

PS Dave - I couldn’t see a Kindle price for your book

Much, indeed, is being gotten away with in this thread, but the advertising of Eliza’s and Dave’s books is the most venial of infractions.  De minimis non curat lex.

Is that phrase from Cicero? or Seneca? Does anyone know?

According to Max L. Veech and Charles R. Moon, “De Minimis Non Curat Lex,” Michigan Law Review 45 (1947): 538-539 (JSTOR):

The maxim was not known as a maxim in the Civil Law until about the Fifteenth Century. Instances in which its principle has been applied to particular problems can be found as far back as Callistratus, and Ulpianus and Paulus, in writings compiled in Justinian’s Digest; but in the list of rules in condensed form contained in the Digest neither de minimis nor a variation of it was included. One of its earliest appearances as a maxim was in I644 in Augustini Barbosae’s book of maxims, Tractatus Varii, where it was stated as de minimis non curat Praetor and quod Praetor non curat de minimis. From these beginnings modern writers in Civil Law now state the maxim as we know it.

The law doesn’t regard truffles?

The law doesn’t regard truffles?

A trifling comment: That is to ensure it doesn’t leave mushroom for doubt!

Thanks to lh.  I’m moderately surprised by your find, but that’s etymology for you.

"The law takes no account of trifles: to each his own desert.”

There was a young lawyer named Rex
Who was sadly deficient in sex.
When charged with exposure,
He said with composure:
“De minimus non curat lex.”

Nice. Original?

Absolutely not.  It was old back when I was young.

Okay, I bought DOMD. 99 cents? This better be the best book ever.

I bought Dave’s book some time ago.

OP Tipping - 10 January 2013 02:32 AM

The Latin CABALLUS definitely evolved from Romanian CAL. I have never encountered the word caballus in classic Latin

Horace: “Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus”

He wrote this about a millennium before anything that you could possibly call the Romanian language existed.

-Never read Horace, because didn’t have the time. According to the rhyme you presented, the word CABALLUS must have been known fairly well, but used very little in literature. There is a similar situation in the Romanian language where a denigrating word exists for a skin-and-bones, barely moving “horse” [no translation exists on that word]. I doubt that the word exists even in the Romanian dictionary, but everybody knows what it means.  From the satiric translation, it seems to me that the word CABALLUS was sort of like Don Quixote’s Rocinante.
- “Should I saddle the sluggish ox, or plow with a caballo” . There are two things here which imply sarcasm; plowing was done in antiquity with oxen, not horses and it seems to me that the CABALLUS was as ridiculous in this rhyme for plowing as the ox was for saddling, especially if a poor run down horse was to be used for plowing. The Romans, under Julius Caesar, conquered Gaul just a generation earlier and my opinion is that the word CABALLUS was imported from there. It was mainly the wealthy Romans who kept horses in Horace’s time and anyone who had horses kept them very well. That was not true in Gaul, where some people had horses half starved in winter and I think that is the source of that word. Some antiquity writers talk about one single Barbarian nation called Celtoskits stretching from Britain to Caspian Sea, below the Germans and they all spoke one language. I arrived at the conclusion that the statement is true and that French language didn’t evolved from Latin, but they were sister languages as well as the language called today Romanian. Therefore, I still think that CABALLUS evolved out the Romanian CAL.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the best book ever, but it’s different from anything else.  If you like it, tell your friends. If you don’t ... 

There have been a lot of South African immigrants to Oz in recent times, so I’m wondering, OP, if any South African words or phrases have started to make their way into the vernacular.  Or, indeed, if anyone else has noticed the odd one creeping in.  Here in the north east of England, we haven’t seen the influx that has taken place in London or other parts of the UK where new words or phrases might be more noticeable.