This really bugs me, even though I know it's inconsequential · 7:34am Jul 22nd, 2015
Remember Tantabus? Good old Tantabus created by Luna to punish her for the whole Nightmare Moon thing?
So, the word apparently comes from "tantibus" which is allegedly Latin for "nightmare". I say "allegedly" because despite trying quite hard, I have not been able to actually find a reputable source that confirms there even is a Latin word such as "tantibus".
And, no, Google Translate is no reputable source.
So, if anyone out there has any information on that, or knows anyone who may possess such information, I would be most grateful if they shared what they know.
Other than that, as long as no contrary evidence is brought up, I will furtherly assume that "tantibus" is neither an actual Latin word, nor does it mean "nightmare".
Thank you for your time.
It might Greek. Ya know, the show has a shit-tonne of Greek mythology in it. Which, even if you did search for Tantabus it would have a Greek reference nearby. The fact that you found nothing solid is either A: It was made up or B: Similar to the term Alicorn, which is in Mythology but it's extremely rare.
Other than all that. You could ask Kudzuhaiku. He'd probably know.
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Yes, there's Tantalus, a guy who stole food and fed his family his son. Since his father happened to be Zeus (pretty much standard for almost any figure in Greek mythology), he was banished to Tartarus. Forever. But that's beside the point.
The thing that's bugging me is that everyone keeps referring to "tantibus" as a Latin word for "nightmare", but I simply can't confirm that.
It's as if people keep saying "Winifred the Great had a son called Bob" and when I look through the history books, I can't even find a single mention of anyone called Winifred the Great.
I wrote a long comment on this in one of the write-off threads, which unfortunately I can't find now. No, tantibus is not Latin for "nightmare". It is not a Latin word.
Google's book-scanning project often creates not-real words by OCR errors. 'Tantibus' was created by various types of OCR errors on old Latin books.
Google Translate then decided back in 2012 or 2013, using its automated statistical translation, that the translation for 'tantibus' was nightmare. People then started using 'tantibus' as the Latin for nightmare. Some Latin dictionaries then picked it up, either from usage, or from Google Translate, like this one.
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Ah, thank you. That explains everything.
I had gathered that it's not a real word (or, at least, not a noun in nominative case and masculine genus), but it was really bugging me where it came from.
That explanation actually makes a lot of sense. The more you know, I guess.
And another point to the list of reasons not to use Google Translate.
4010290 I can't promise it's the right explanation. It's what seemed to have happened, from looking at all the uses of 'tantibus' that Google found.