# obscuritas aeternus luminis



## edwardtheconfessor

_obscuritas aeternus luminis

_This is an, admittedly, 'dog Latin' motto. The oxymoron is, of course, intentional.
It is meant to mean (of course), loosely translated, 
"Darkness eternal light".
BUT ... is the grammar correct here? Anyone? If not, could you correct it please?
Thanks.  - edwardtheconfessor


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## edwardtheconfessor

PS: The ambiguity is (I think) also intentional here. i.e.: is the darkness eternal, or the light, or both (as I suspect)? But  do we have proper noun/adjective/case agreement here? I'm no Latin scholar (I'm  afraid) so please keep your advice simple. Thanks.


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## Agró

Latin for "light" can be both "Lumen", neuter, and "Lux", feminine.For a correct agreement:_

Obscuritas aeternum lumen_.
_Obscuritas aeterna lux._


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## Cagey

It is not possible to make the Latin phrase ambiguous in the way you describe   A Latin adjective (aeternus) has endings that indicate the gender and syntactic function of the word it modifies.  I would write one of the following:

_obscuritas aeterna luminis_: The eternal darkness/obscurity of light. 

_obscuritas luminis_ _aeterni_: The darkness/obscurity of eternal light.


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## Agró

Sorry, I may have completely misunderstood your sentence.

I thought you meant _Darkness (is) the eternal light._


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## edwardtheconfessor

Thank you both; Agro (don't have accent facility in English, sorry) and Cagey. No; it does not mean 'Darkness (is) the eternal light' ... though that's an interesting idea!
I think Cagey's correction 
_obscuritas aeterna luminis
_probably serves best here - though I take the point about the 'elegance' of correct Latin agreement of nouns and adjectives (which we long ago threw away in English, when we lost so many of our inflexions).  So ... unless anyone can advise better ... _obscuritas aerterna luminis  _​STANDS!!


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## lacrimae

Another solution
Darkness shines eternally, Obscuritas aeternum lucet


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