From akriman@darwin.helios.nd.edu Sun Apr 28 01:25:40 2002 Received: from mailscan5.cac.washington.edu (mailscan5.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.14]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g3S8Pcw3024012 for ; Sun, 28 Apr 2002 01:25:38 -0700 Received: FROM mxu3.u.washington.edu BY mailscan5.cac.washington.edu ; Sun Apr 28 01:25:37 2002 -0700 Received: from mailspool.helios.nd.edu (mailspool.helios.nd.edu [129.74.250.7]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g3S8Pbre004249 for ; Sun, 28 Apr 2002 01:25:37 -0700 Received: from darwin.helios.nd.edu (darwin.helios.nd.edu [129.74.250.114]) by mailspool.helios.nd.edu (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id DAA18648 for ; Sun, 28 Apr 2002 03:25:36 -0500 (EST) Received: (from akriman@localhost) by darwin.helios.nd.edu (8.11.2/8.10.1/ND-cluster) id g3S8PbQ28281 for classics@u.washington.edu; Sun, 28 Apr 2002 03:25:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 03:25:37 -0500 (EST) From: Alfred M Kriman Message-Id: <200204280825.g3S8PbQ28281@darwin.helios.nd.edu> To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: anothercide Last April 18, in the ravel of the filicide thread, I wrote > I encountered a certain word some years ago and it's *killing* me > that I can't remember it. It's a homophone (possibly exact) of > _suicide_ and a (possibly obsolete) technical term (substantive) > in Scottish property law. ... Off-list, Sandy Malcolm suggested _sasine_, and a general online reference at the Scottish Archive Network site, , which defines sasine as | either the symbolic act of giving legal possession of a piece of | heritable property, or the instrument by which such an act was | proved to have happened. see symbols Ivan Van Laningham passed along the following suggestion from another list: > There's a medieval term -- I thought it was British, and you know British > legal terms remain valid *forever* -- seisin. My dictionary also spells it > `seizin,' root `seize,' but I've always liked the older version. It has to > do with acquiring property: to `take seisin' one cuts a small square of turf > from the land in question. I believe one can either claim it for oneself or > be given it by the lord to whom you are now enfeoffed. I believe this is the same word. Over the centuries, the procedures for establishing possession of land evolved, generally moving from symbolic public acts toward witnessed official documents. I'm grateful for the effort, and though _sasine_ wasn't the word, I was motivated Friday finally to find my way to the law library, where I learned more than I needed to know about sasine and other subjects indexed under ess, and recognized my old friend stillicide < L. stillicidium. This sounds a closer homophone of _suicide_ than it looks, especially if you pronounce it with an American or English el (as opposed to the tense el used in some Scottish dialects). According to David M. Walker's _Principles of Scottish Private Law_, vol. III (Property), p. 200 of the 4/e: | The servitude of stillicide or eavesdrop entitles the dominant | tenement to discharge rainwater from a roof on to the servient | tenement. Apart from this servitude there is no right to do so | though there is a right to discharge surface water by natural | drainage on to the inferior lands. The reason I encountered this in Scottish law is that the law of Scotland, like that of most continental countries and unlike most of the Anglophone world, is based closely on Roman code (plus a few centuries of English influence, of course, and minus the Napoleonic reforms). Black's only lists the Latin term. This difference (between the English Common Law tradition and the Latin traditions -- Roman Catholic Canon Law and Roman Civil Law -- that contributed to Scottish law) leads to a greater prevalence of Latin in Scottish law. In the US and Canada, of course, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, and Québec are the ius civile exceptions (technically, mixed jurisdictions). In the present context, it's probably worth noting explicitly that Nova Scotia, the former French colony of Acadia, is a Common Law jurisdiction. The charm of _stillicide_ is that it is a rare example of a nonfatal word ending in -icide. In a free online _Pest Management Glossary_ (you get what you pay for, http://www.pestmanagement.co.uk/library/gloss_o1.html), I found the following amusing, sort of, sequence of entries: | Ovacide | Pesticide specifically active in the control of the egg stage of | numerous insects. .. .. .. | Ovicide | A pesticide toxicant for insect or mite eggs. Usually restricted | to action on eggs of phytophagous mites e.g. red spider mite. The | word is almost universally accepted in this sense, but in classical | terminology it should mean 'sheep (Latin, ovis)-killer' and that an | egg-killer should be 'ovacide'. [ "A" for effort?] | | Oviduct [no further comments on sheep] .... | Oviparae | Sexual females which mate with males and lay fertilised eggs. | | Oviparous .... | Oviposition .... | Ovipositor .... | Ovisac My favorite -cide word in this resource is slimicide. Just quoting, AMK .