Latin for tweet?

I'm not on twitter myself, and haven't really contemplated what the Latin for to tweet might be. The editorial in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald suggested frigere, in this short post script:

THE 18th-century philosopher Bishop Berkeley thought things existed only if they were perceived. In all modesty we wish to propose a variant of this doctrine: people exist only if they tweet, or esse est frigere, for those who prefer their axioms in questionable Latin. The basis for this is our report that social scientists have plotted the mood of the whole world from Twitter.

After examining half a billion tweets and tallying up when people tweet positive and negative words, they conclude that most of us wake up happy, then things go downhill through the work day until knock-off time, when tweeters resume their early bounciness. This astonishing finding is all well and good, but what about people who don't tweet? Might their mood swings be in the opposite direction? Here our axiom springs into action. Either they are the same as the twitterers, in which case they are superfluous, or they are different but undetectable, in which case who cares? ... All together now: frigo ergo sum. I tweet, therefore I am.

I was a bit puzzled by this verb, and admit I had to look it up to see what it meant. Here's the definition according to William Whitaker's Words (I'm on holidays and don't have a real dictionary with me):

frigo, frigere, frixi, frictus: to roast, parch, fry

I'm not sure how they chose this verb, given that definition. Perhaps there's another meaning not given on-line, or perhaps there's some joke I'm not getting. In either case I would have thought pipiare or titiare (which both describe the sounds birds make) would have been a better choice. Any other suggestions?

UPDATE: unsurprisingly, someone else has already given this some thought. Here are the Rogue Classicist's (who is actually on twitter and has much more authority than I on such matters) suggestions. While I was raeding this I was also distracted by this post, which reminded me of why I love Boris Johnson so much.

Many are the terrors of the earth...

Boris Johnson (my favourite classically trained conservative politician) has written an article in response to the recent horrific earthquake in Japan and the unfolding situation with its nuclear power plants. I disagree with a lot of what he says, but, as a Latin teacher, I've got to admire the style with which he says it. Here are a few examples:

Whatever happens in the world, whatever the catastrophe, we just have to put ourselves at the centre of the story. In the second millennium BC, there was a huge earthquake and tsunami in the Mediterranean, an event that has been associated with the eruption of Greece's Santorini volcano. It was obvious to the ancients that this must have been to do with mankind - and specifically the misbehaviour of the people of Atlantis, who got uppity and dissed Poseidon. So Poseidon struck back. Of course he did...


I am afraid to say that our manic post hoc ergo propter hoc-ery survives to this day. When Phuket in Thailand was hit by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, there were a large number of religious nut-jobs - and not only in America - who were convinced that this was some kind of divine vengeance on that town for the alleged immorality of its residents and its reputation for sex tourism. It is always us, us, us. Many are the terrors of the earth, says the chorus in Sophocles, and nothing is more terrible than mankind.

Well, the only good thing about an earthquake and tsunami on this scale is that they remind us that even Sophocles was capable of talking bilge. There are plenty of things more terrifying than man, and they include asteroids, earthquakes, tsunamis and anything else that reminds us that we are tiny blobs of flesh and blood crawling on the thin integument of a sphere of boiling rock and metal, and that there are events in the life of the planet that are simply nothing to do with human action...

The response to the Japan earthquake is to send all the aid and the logistic support that we can. But we don't have to treat this as any kind of verdict on mankind's activities. We don't have to make amends by sacrificing a hecatomb to Poseidon. We don't have to lead 100 garlanded men and maidens to the top of the pyramid and then cut out their beating hearts. We don't have to stop drilling for oil, and we don't have to sacrifice our efforts to provide safe, clean and green nuclear power.

Reasons to Learn Latin; #3974

[The respective mayors of Sydney and London; Julius Caesar (left) and Boris Johnson]

A couple of articles for some light reading of the weekend. Firstly an entertaining and insightful piece by Boris Johnson (mayor of London) on the value of learning Latin. Here's a taste:

...there are times when a minister says something so maddening, so death-defyingly stupid, that I am glad not to be in the same room in case I should reach out, grab his tie, and end what is left of my political career with one almighty head-butt.

Such were my feelings on reading Mr Ed Balls on the subject of teaching Latin in schools...

(Thanks to Rogue Classicism for bringing this to my attention)

And closer to home Charles Purcell (of Chaser fame) imagines what Caesar would be like as benevolent dictator of Sydney.

If Julius Caesar was in charge of Sydney, we wouldn't still be arguing whether to build a cross circus maximus or integrated rail/ferry/chariot link. No longer would the scrolls and papyruses of the day have headlines like "Welcome to SnailRail", "Ferry system slow than horse-drawn buggies", "ancient Egyptians got to work quicker than Sydneysiders - study". Caesar would declare: "I came, I saw, I ordered the building of an integrated transport network." He would order construction immediately and no senator would dare object, lest he be sent to govern the barbarian provinces of Gaul (aka Mount Druitt).

The benign dictator would announce that Sydney's much-needed second airport would finally be built - in Mosman.

Don't miss the article's comments if you're a Terry Pratchett fan.

(Thanks to Lilian for bringing this to my attention)