_Dog Latin_.--The answer of one of your late correspondents (E. M. B., Vol.
vii., p. 622.) on the subject of "Latin--Latiner," has revived a Query in
your First Volume (p. 230.) as to the origin of this expression which does
not appear to have been answered. I do not remember having seen any
explanation of the term, but I have arrived at one for myself, and present
it to your readers for what it is worth. Nothing, it must be admitted, can
be more inconsistent with the usual forms of language than the Latin of
mediæval periods; it is often, in fact, not Latin at all, but merely a
Latin form given to simple English or other words, and admitting of the
greatest variety. Now of all animals the distinctions of breed are perhaps
more numerous in the canine race than any other. The word "mongrel,"
originally applied to one of these quadruped combinations of variety, has
long been used to signify anything in which mixture of class existed,
especially of a debasing kind, to which such mixture generally tends.
Nothing could be more appropriate than the application of the term to the
"infima latinitas" of the Middle Ages; and from "mongrel" the transition to
the name of the genus from that of the degenerate species appears to me to
be very easy, though fanciful.