Crocodile Classics

My year 12 class have brought Crocodile Classics to my attention. I'm not sure how to best describe it, so here are a few examples of what you'll find there.

WARNING: If you visit the site, some of them are a bit rude...

Gerundives

Kennedy discovers the gerund
and leads it back into captivity.

Apropos nothing, I was thinking about gerundives the other day and thought I’d put together a bit of a list of the gerundives English has appropriated from Latin. Firstly though a gerundive is a verbal adjective (not to be confused with a gerund which is a verbal noun), in Latin often conveying a sense of compulsion or necessity or obligation. That is a gerundive describes something which must be done. It can be a bit of a tricky concept to get your head around, since there’s no real equivalent in English, although as I mentioned before English has appropriated several gerundives from Latin to be used as English nouns.

Two of my favourites are the names Amanda and Miranda, meaning she who must be loved and she who must be admired respectively.