testament and testicle

Seth Ackerman sia at nyc.rr.com
Thu Feb 28 17:47:53 PST 2002


Charles Jannuzi wrote:


> His linguistics (not Doug's) are as bad as his social theories. They are
not
> common roots but rather just a coincidence of homographs, testis meaning
> witness and testis the latin plural for testiculus. However, folk
> etymologies like this often do appeal to nut cases to help them 'prove'
> something.

The folk etymology in this case is that in Roman courts, witnesses would swear an oath on their testicles, the punishment for perjury being castration. For some reason, I always believed this story. Maybe it's a myth.

Seth



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