by Gerry
This is a word similarity search for Latin, based on Whitaker's Words. I've used it for the Latin texts on my Ancient-Spooks website.
The idea is that the ancient elites have encrypted many of their texts, using words with similar consonants patterns. You can input the consonants here, and the search will find all Latin words with similar patterns. If you choose the right ones, the text may yield its secret meaning, typically something about rulers deceiving their subjects.
(Under the hood, the search constructs a regular expression, regex for short, which would be a pain to type in explicitly.)
In the 1st text field, you can input consonants, separated by blanks, e.g. l t n
. The blanks will be filled with the vowels A/E/I/J/O/U/V/W/Y, and the common ending consonants S/N/M/R/T will be added automatically. You can also input vowels if you search for vowel similarity.
l t n
will find words like Latinus and latens. l t n
(1 blank at the beginning) will find words like Latinus and latens, but also illatinus, i.e. words with and without vowels at the start. l t n
(2 blanks at the beginning) forces vowels, so it will only find words like illatinus, i.e. only words that start with a vowel. Often, words encrypt others where the consonants are not the same, but similar, like B/F/P/V, D/T, S/Z, C/G/Q/X.
s bp l t
(B or P) will find words like sepultus and also sublitus. n cg r
(C or G) will find words like necare and also negare.
You can put the regex quantifiers ?
(none or one) or *
(none or any number) after a consonant group. If you don't, the +
(once or more) will be applied by default. The asterisk *
by itself also serves as a wildcard for any number of any letters. This can be important if strict similarity doesn't yield any meaningful results.
q d r *
(any ending) will find words like quadro, but also quadruplator. c n f n? d
(optional N) will find words like confodio, but also confundo. a d f c t ts*
(optional T/S) will find words like adfecto, but also adfectatio and adfectiosus.
In the 2nd text field, you can input meanings, separated by blanks, e.g. hide cover conceal
. Use an underscore to separate words within one meaning, e.g. go_out
. An underscore before the word forces word wrap at the beginning, e.g. _out
. An underscore at the end forces word wrap at the end, e.g. go_
.
cover
will find words like "cover" and "covering", but also "discover" and "uncover" which have the opposite meaning. _cover
(underscore at the beginning) will only find words like "cover" and "covering". go out
will find all entries with either "go" or "out" anywhere within the meanings, which is a lot. go_out
(underscore connecting the words) will only find the exact phrase "go out". You can combine the 1st and the 2nd text field, to search for consonant patterns with a special meaning. This is useful if you have a hunch on what the text is really about, and want to narrow the results. For the most important meanings, you can use the shortcut button to search for dozens of synonyms at once.
l t *
and _hid secret
will find latens for "hidden", latesco for "hide", latenter for "secret". r cgx *
and _king rule
will find rex for "king", rego for "rule", regulus for "petty king". The hardest part is finding the intended secret meaning, out of the combinations of many dozens of similar words for each word in the original text. Here are the clues I use: