# Animal Disputax



## HermanTheGerman

From what I understand, this refers to a very argumentative person and usually has a negative connotation. 
Is there any well-known, commonly accepted English equivalent for this expression?


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## Scholiast

Greetings

Have you a context for the phrase? And are you looking for a colloquial English equivalent? We can say of someone "she is an argumentative so-and-so", for example. Or are you looking for something more colourful and rude? Incidentally, I would be interested to know whether there is an equivalent, _umgangsprachliche_, version in idiomatic German.


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## HermanTheGerman

Scholiast said:


> Have you a context for the phrase? And are you looking for a colloquial English equivalent?


The phrase is used in a turn of the century English non-fiction book to describe a certain very argumentative scholar. 
Obviously, at that time knowledge of Latin was expected and no translation was provided. 
I was wondering if there's an equally concise English equivalent in the same register that the author could have used instead.


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## fdb

HermanTheGerman said:


> a turn of the century English non-fiction book



This is not exactly what we call context. Books normally do have titles.

The phrase is straight-forward Latin, but I do not think it is widely used in English, or other modern languages.


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## Scholiast

Greetings once again

As the OP surmises, _homo disputax_ would be understood by many or most readers, in an ironic contortion of _homo sapiens_. In view of the irony, and of the deliberate use of Linnaean formulation, it is probably best left as that - just as one might say (of someone particularly stupid or ignorant) _homo nesciens_, or of a persistent liar _homo mendax_. The point of the phrase was precisely to lend a wittily specious scientific feel to the description.

In a scholarly context, one could certainly imagine someone such as A.E.Housman using this of a fellow-scholar - for instance, the _praefatio_ to his critical edition of Lucan, _BC_, contains many unflattering references to other textual critics in not dissimilar terms.

"The disputatious fellow..." might convey, in modern English, something of the same tone of disdain. There may be something further to be found in Gibbon's magnificent _Vindication_, but at the moment I have not time to do it or the question justice.


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## HermanTheGerman

Scholiast said:


> "The disputatious fellow..." might convey, in modern English, something of the same tone of disdain.


Thanks! "Disputatious fellow" fits the bill nicely. (I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never heard or seen "disputatious" before.)


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## Scholiast

Greetings

Curiously, a discussion in a different WR Forum has just reminded me of H.G.Wells'...

....Filby, an* argumentative person*...

Scholiastic salutations


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## Scholiast

And another footnote (re ##5, 6):

I have just encountered the following in a book on late antiquity:

"...in truth the Qu'ran...is a most *disputatious* book"
(Tom Holland, _In the Shadow of the Sword_, p. 308)


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## wandle

Two observations:
(a) _*disputax*_ may be a coinage, since it is not in Lewis and Short;
(b) _*animal disputax*_ appears to be a pun on _*animal politicum*_ or *ζῷον πολιτικόν*, which is Aristotle's definition of man in his _Politics_: a political animal.
He says that the state, the political entity, is inherent in the human being in the same way as the plant is inherent in the seed.


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## Scholiast

Saluete


> _*disputax*_ may be a coinage, since it is not in Lewis and Short


 (wandle, #9).

Quite. Also not in Niermeyer's _Dictionary of Mediaeval Latin_. But it is at least a _legitimate_ coinage in terms of its formation. It's a pity HermantheGerman has been unable to supply us with details of the source. I would hazard a guess that it is a somewhat ironic aside by one academic about another.


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## fdb

Nor is it in the _Thes. ling. lat._, nor in any of the dictionaries of Middle and Late Latin.


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## Ben Jamin

fdb said:


> Nor is it in the _Thes. ling. lat._, nor in any of the dictionaries of Middle and Late Latin.



But the adjective "disputax" existed in Classical Latin?


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## fdb

Ben Jamin said:


> But the adjective "disputax" existed in Classical Latin?



No .


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