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5 days ago“Sculptors in antique Rome could fix mistakes they made by mixing marble dust with wax. If a sculptor was especially gifted and made no mistakes that needed fixing, they would market their art as “sin cera”, which means “without wax”, which is where the word “sincere” comes from.” (Source: Pooptimist@lemmy.world)
Extremely unlikely. Always be careful of etymologies that are just a little too pat. Sometimes they hold up, but more often they’re just someone “seeing Jesus in the toast” and then making up some bullshit to justify it.
I’ll borrow this from my contribution to a discussion yesterday, but Shakespeare coined fewer phrases than you’d think, and probably not very many words at all (though certainly more than the average schlub):
As a further aside, he’s one of the best-researched non-noble lives of his era, and the “Authorship question” is the equivalent of History Channel Ancient Aliens “documentaries.” It’s titillating nonsense put out by snobs who can’t fathom that their literary idol was not an elite (while still definitely privileged compared to the truly common person).