deird1 | do your research, writers!

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NCIS is still annoying me with its abuse of Latin...

Rewatching season 6, and once again gritted my teeth at the following exchange:

Abby: "Gibbs! Primitus Victor*? It's Latin. It means 'first victim'."
Gibbs: "Yeah. I know, Abbs."

* from a message the killer left them

GRRRR.

No. No it does not mean that. It does not mean anything of the sort.

'Primitus victor' is indeed Latin. And it means 'first winner'. 'First victim' would be 'primitus victima'.

I understand why they did it. They thought "victor" sounded cooler, and didn't think anyone would notice. But that's no excuse for doing it wrong.

*is petty and pedantic*

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

speaker_to_customers

In the first episode of NCIS that I ever watched a gunman was holed up in a trailer and Gibbs got him out by firing a pistol shot into a gas canister to cause a big explosion.

The day before I'd watched the Mythbusters doing their 'James Bond Special' and one of the myths was a scene where James Bond did the same thing. They conclusively proved that no normal pistol could even penetrate a gas canister and, even when they used a high-power rifle with armour-piercing bullets and did manage to penetrate it, there was no explosion. They had to use a vehicle-mounted Mini-gun firing incendiary bullets at 2,000 rounds per minute before they could replicate the explosion from the movie.

That scene nearly put me off NCIS altogether. I persevered, and learned to love Abby, but I've never trusted their research.

From:

lliira

They used "victor" for "victim"? That... that's an English word. I think pretty much everyone seeing the show is going to go "wtf".

From:

beer_good_foamy

I've never watched NCIS, but this makes it sound like the killer is some weird fanatic who thinks he chooses to honour his victims by kiling them, and our heroes will never catch him since their Latin is so lousy they'll never understand how he thinks.

Or if they do catch him by mistake, he'll be the one yelling at them.

"I left you clues! I told you exactly what I was doing! How could you not catch me?"
"Uh, it was all in, like, Latin..."
"DICTIONARIES, people!"

From:

petzipellepingo

I'm not a student of Latin and even I know that's not right.

"sighs"

From:

kouredios

It's worse than that. "Primitus" is an adverb. They should have been using "primus."

From:

velvetwhip

Please don't get me started. That show is to accuracy what the Kardashians are to quiet good taste.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Abby, but I try not to dwell on the myriad moments of utter fail each episode brings.

Gabrielle

From:

hickumu

I confess, I've never really watched NCIS mostly because I've heard of its gross abuse of computers >_< . It's almost nice to know that their research fail isn't confined.

You'd think Latin would be easy not to mess up on, though. And they'd have to know a lot more people wuold notice than, say, including "levels" on Prince of Persia.

Honestly, the first thing I thought of reading this was the scene with painting the walls in "Monty Python's Life of Brian".

From:

immer_am_lesen

So it wasn't just me...even with my basic one year of Latin, I knew it wasn't right. (I love the Latin graffiti scene in MP too!)
My other half always goes 'argh' when McGee has some wacky amazing thing he's doing with computers, and has to point out why this/that/the other can't be done or would never work like that....same with Bones episodes, he almost always finds something wrong with what Hodges says. :-)

From:

deird1

*nods*

I watched the first episode of CSI a while ago, and the physics mistakes they made were appalling, and made me very cynical about every other conclusion they came up with.