Greek astronomers knew the earth was spherical around the 6th century BC (easily deduced by observing ships sailing in the Mediterranean, as well as the visibility of the stars at different latitudes) and had already demonstrated that the moon was a sphere 150 years before Ceasar's reign. Pliny records that Gaius Sulpicius Gallus enjoyed promotion for winning a battle by correctly predicting an eclipse and timing his military action around it, also before Ceasar's birth. Around the same time, Seleucus (who lived in what we now call Iraq) postulated that the earth orbited the sun rather than vice versa.
Ceasar himself was interested in astronomy, to the extent that he replaced the previous Roman calendar with the Julian Calendar (a modification of the Egyptian Solar calendar), the first to feature a year of 365 days and and include a quadrennial leap year, which endured for 1500 years before the Gregorian Calendar tweaked the leap year scheme for centenary years; considering that the inaccuracy of the Julian calender only amounted to 3 days over 400 years, it error factor was < 0.001%.
Ceasar may not have thought of the earth as just another planet orbiting just another sun in just another galaxy, but it's highly unlikely that he believed the earth to be flat.
I suck. I thought we were still talking about rot13-ing words and that I should point out that Julius Caesar could not have known what the modern English language word "earth" means and that it is the same as "terra" in Latin, i.e., a point about historical linguistics instead of astronomy and natural philosophy.
Junior engineers: here is an English dictionary. What words in the English dictionary have a ROT13 representation which is also in the dictionary?
Senior engineers: here is an English dictionary. What words in the English dictionary have a ROT13 representation which is also in the dictionary AND that fact would be amusing to people.
He limited it to words that weren't "Scrabble words", that is, ones he recognized. Another rot13 pair of length 7 are purpura⇔Chechen, in my /usr/shared/dict/words. Pairs of length 6 are, cheery⇔purrel (what is 'purrel'?), greeny⇔terral (what is 'terral'?), orphan⇔becuna ('becuna' is a type of fish?).
I had to Google "purrel -purell" to track that down, and even then it wasn't an immediate hit.
According to WordNik.com, which cites the "Century Dictionary", a purrel is "A list ordained to be at the end of kersies to prevent deceit in diminishing their length."
Wasn't that helpful?! According to Wiktionary, a kersie is Afrikaans for cherry.
Ergo a purrel is a list at the end of cherries to prevent lies about their length. Clear as mud, eh?
(Yes, none of this is helpful at all, but I'm cracking up)
That's the same conclusion I found, using the same tools. I tried something different this time and searched for "purrel oed". Managed to find a citation from c 1617 in "The Acts and Ordinances of the Eastland Company". "Noe brother of this Companya .. shall .. halfe or Cut .. in the myddle of any Cloth .. Nor shall after the Laste daye of August 1618 shipp any Cloth into Th'eastparts which shall have two purrells or a particon in the middle."
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 43.7 ms ] threadCeasar himself was interested in astronomy, to the extent that he replaced the previous Roman calendar with the Julian Calendar (a modification of the Egyptian Solar calendar), the first to feature a year of 365 days and and include a quadrennial leap year, which endured for 1500 years before the Gregorian Calendar tweaked the leap year scheme for centenary years; considering that the inaccuracy of the Julian calender only amounted to 3 days over 400 years, it error factor was < 0.001%.
Ceasar may not have thought of the earth as just another planet orbiting just another sun in just another galaxy, but it's highly unlikely that he believed the earth to be flat.
Junior engineers: here is an English dictionary. What words in the English dictionary have a ROT13 representation which is also in the dictionary?
Senior engineers: here is an English dictionary. What words in the English dictionary have a ROT13 representation which is also in the dictionary AND that fact would be amusing to people.
[tang ⇔ gnat] are not only the ROT13 of each other, but also the inverse of each other. It seems these two properties coincide in this pair only.
I'm also surprised that the longest pair is [nowhere ⇔ abjurer] at 7 letters, with [terra ⇔ green] being second with 5.
According to WordNik.com, which cites the "Century Dictionary", a purrel is "A list ordained to be at the end of kersies to prevent deceit in diminishing their length."
Wasn't that helpful?! According to Wiktionary, a kersie is Afrikaans for cherry.
Ergo a purrel is a list at the end of cherries to prevent lies about their length. Clear as mud, eh?
(Yes, none of this is helpful at all, but I'm cracking up)
http://www.wordnik.com/words/purrel http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kersie
I think I just added more mud.
Here's a list of all words (in sowpods.txt) of six or more letters which translate in rot-N for some N:
(sowpods.txt is at http://code.google.com/p/scrabblehelper/source/browse/trunk/...)