The Latin for Cold

The Latin for Cold.

A school-master asked one of his scholars in the
winter time, what was the Latin for cold. " Oh!
sir," answered the lad, " I forget at this moment,
although I have it at my fingers' ends."

J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps & A.J. Storey, Cambridge Jokes: From the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; 1842), p .8.

A Most Excellent Hobby

Harry C. Schnur, ‘Do-It-Yourself: How to Write Latin Verse’, The Classical Journal, 52.8 (1957), 353-57 (p. 353):

Writing Latin Verse demands compliance with certain fixed rules; it therefore challenges both intellect and imagination, very much like a chess problem, and provides a similar kind of satisfaction, with the added bonus of a modest feeling of creative achievement. This pursuit immensely increases our understanding of the Roman poets’ technique, difficulties and felicities: of meter, rhythm and sound. As a do-it-yourself hobby, moreover, it is both independent of the weather and much less costly than, say, collecting incunabula or Old Masters.

Schoolmaster Latin

One thing at least is beyond controversy, that Latin was the schoolmaster of both the Romance and German tongues: and the scholar’s practice in a language immutable yet all but infinitely adaptable is invaluable to hobble-de-hoy languages not quite sure what to do with their feet.

Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (London: Constable, 1938; 1927), p. 215.

My Head is as Full of Latin as an Egg’s Full of Oatmeal

Robert Greene (1558-1592), Plays, ed. by T.H. Dickinson (London: T. Fisher Unwin, [1909]), p. 296 [Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (c. 1589), Act V, Scene I]:

MILES:
A scholar, quoth you! marry, sir, I would I had been made a bottle-maker when I was made a scholar; for I can get neither to be a deacon, reader, nor schoolmaster, no, not the clerk of a parish. Some call me a dunce; another saith my head is as full of Latin as an egg’s full of oatmeal [...]A scholar, quoth you!

What is Latin for ‘Bicycle’?

1) duae rotae
Found on a sign found in Portugal Place, Cambridge, UK.

DUAE ROTAE HIC RELICTAE PERIMENTUR
ΕΝΘΑΔΕ ΛΗΦΘΕΝΤΕΣ ΔΥΟΚΥΚΛΟΙ ΔΙΑΦΘΑΡΗΣΟΝΤΑΙ

Bicycles left here will be destroyed.

Incidentally, the Greek text is a little wonky: first of all, there are a few Roman letters masquerading as Greek ones, and secondly ληφθέντες is the aorist past participle of λαμβάνω not λείπω (it should read λειφθέντες).

And although the Greek for bicycle, δύο κύκλοι (two wheels), does get the sense across, but I would have preferred ποδήλατον, which is akin to the modern Greek word ποδήλατο, which etymologically refers to the movement of feet rather than anything to do with wheels. Modern Greek does have a word for 'two wheels' (δίκυκλο) but it refers to a scooter not a bicycle.
 
2) birota
Not quite a postmodern neologism, but in the past it referred to a two-wheeled vehicle pulled by donkeys; in my opinion it is the better term for a bike.

From a passage on the popularity of bicycles in Münster, found in a Latin city guidebook: 

   Birotarum magnam vim omnes qui Monasterium veniunt mirantur; etenim cum civium numerus vix 280 000 excedat, iidem scilicet cives 500 000 birotas habent. Fateor cum primum Monasterii degerem nulla fere antea consuetudine birotae contracta, indigne tulisse me quoque ad usum birotae propter manifestas et apertas commoditates adduci. At cum paulo post animadverti non solum pueros puellasque eis uti sed etiam viros graves atque matres familias, coepi insuescere, praesertim cum hanc rem saluti atque pigritiae depellendae egregie conducere expertus perspicerem.

All those who come to Münster marvel at the great force of bicycles; for although the number of citizens hardly exceeds 280,000, those same citizens own 500,000 bicycles. I confess that when I first spent time in Münster and had little prior experience with using a bicycle, I resented having to use a bicycle in spite of its open and clear advantages. But a little later, when I noticed that not only were boys and girls using them but also serious men and mothers with families, I began to get used to it, especially since I had well observed the advantage of using this thing for the sake of health and uprooting laziness.

Helgus Nikitinski, De laudibus Monasterii Westphaliae metropolis (Naples: in aedibus La Scuola di Pitagora, 2012), p. 142. My translations.