COUNTRY LIVING
… aut in reducta valle mugientium
prospectat errantis greges…
Prospecto, to view, is obvious enough. Erro, to wander, is the source of our English error. Te err is to wander from the right path. In When You Gonna Wake Up? Bob Dylan wrote “you think he’s just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires,“ which makes me suspect that he knows the etymology. In Latin, the syllable -duc- is often connected to duco, to lead. Reduco can mean to lead back, but reductus means deeply set. You can think of the valley as leading the eye back into the distance, or as reduced by perspective.
Grex, gregis is another of those illuminating words. It means a herd of or flock. In English someone gregarious loves company. If you’ve ever watched cows in a field you will know that they tend to stick close together. Egregious can be outstanding in a good way or a bad way. Literally, it means standing out from (e or ex) the herd. Grex is a third-declension noun, and it gives us a clear example of something very useful to the Latin learner. If English words are derived from Latin nouns, they will often come, as here, from the genitive form. Bear that in mind when you are puzzling over an unfamiliar noun, or looking for a handy mnemonic.
Mugientium comes from mugio, to moo. I suspect we can’t tell at this point whether the English word is derived from the Latin, or whether we all hear cows the same way.
One last chunk of learning, and then we’ll have a guest read the whole piece.