nonagesimussextus

Theme for this week: Easily confused words

salto, saltare, saltavi, saltatus

Definition: to dance, jump; to portray in a dance

salio, salire, salii (or salui), saltus

Definition: to jump, leap, hop, spring, bound; move spasmodically, twitch; (of fluid) to spurt, discharge; (of an animal) to mount

Sententiae: Ancilae succidiam saliunt ante festivitatis Martialem et Salii saliunt serviendi causa Marti, sed saltatrix saltat saltandi causa.

The slave women salt the meat before the feast of Mars and the Salii (priests of Mars) leap for the sake of serving Mars, but the dancer dances for the sake of dancing.

The word salto was featured in an Upper Certamen bonus question at national convention, and there was some controversy over the translation. The team translated it as "leaping with the devil in the pale moonlight," as opposed to "dancing with the devil...." Although it seems like jumping would be a perfectly acceptable translation (in my extensive XD dance-related experience, leaping is sort of a subset of dancing), another team contested it on the grounds that salto cannot mean jumping. The first team lost the points. *shrugs* Apparently there is some distinction between dancing and jumping.

Actually, the words salto and salio aren't that different in meaning or form. In fact, you could probably get away with translating them both as "to jump" unless context tells you otherwise. Salto can be the dative/ablative sing. ppp of salio, though, so still watch out!

Oh, there is also a rather uncommon word that looks almost exactly like salio:

salio, salire, salivi, salitum--to salt, preserve with salt, salt before a sacrifice

However, it's not in my (admittedly rather lacking) dictionary, so I get the impression that it doesn't occur particularly often. I found it on Whitaker's words and Perseus, but I didn't feel entirely comfortable using it as a main vocab word.

--Your resident dancer (saltatrix =D ), standing in for Christina