Kitap 8
3.46
I might quote other collocations of words which are liable to the same objection, but to discuss them in detail would be to fall into that very fault which I have just said should be avoided. A similar offence against modesty may be caused by the division of words, as, for example, by the use of the nominative of intercapedinis. interccapedo, of which the last two syllables might give rise to unseemly laughter; pedo = break wind.
3.47
And it is not merely in writing that this may occur, but you will find, unless you exercise the greatest care, that there are a number of persons who take pleasure in putting an indecent interpretation on words, thinking, as Ovid Met. i. 502. says: that whatsoe'er is hid is best of all. Nay, an obscene meaning may be extracted even from words which are as far removed from indecency as possible. Celsus, for example, detects an instance of κακέμφατον in the Virgilian Georg. i. 357. phrase: incipiunt agitata tumescere; but if this point of view be accepted, it will be risky to say anything at all.
