31-10-2025, 08:19 AM
My intention is to use this thread to create, with your help, as complete an overview as possible of the ligatures and brevigraphs used in VM. I'll just get started and hope that such a thread doesn't already exist. (I searched and scrolled until I got tired...)
Definition
Ligatures:
Individual characters created by joining two or more letters, often to improve legibility or speed up writing.
Brevigraphs:
Special shorthand characters that abbreviate common words or endings in medieval Latin, such as a ‘9’-shaped character for ‘-us’ or a stroke above the line for missing letters.
My sources, unless otherwise stated
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The Basics:
[attachment=11872]
First, here are the classics of Brevigraphs, as I will refer to this list again and again throughout this article.
Of particular interest for VM is the ‘9’ as a very productive prefix and suffix for con, com, cum, cun, us, os, is s. – normally superscripted, which of course does not prevent us from interpreting the eva ‘y’ as just that.
This brings us to the similarities in VM.
This bloody "aiin"
[attachment=11875]
Here, the ending looks like the end of aiin, but it is a ‘u’ with a curved abbreviation stroke (titulus) indicating that letters are missing before the u (in this case, a t). This leads to the conclusion that the word aiin could also be ‘aiu’ with one or more letters simply missing.
(Actu is the ablative singular form of ‘actus’ and means ‘through the act’, ‘in the action’ or ‘through the deed’.)
[attachment=11876]
Here we have the classic Aiin ending, which means ‘mum’, although in rapid writing the ‘m’ counterstroke does not necessarily have to be written.
(Note: I assume that neither ‘o’ nor ‘a’ are stable in the Voynich text (!) and use them freely)
Aiin = -amum and -omum are not Latin suffixes in the strict sense. The actual suffix is -um. Endings such as balsamum, amomum, cinnamomum, cardamomum, opobalsamum are loan words from Greek (-amon/-ōmon → in Latin -amum/-omum), especially for spices, resins and plant names.
Frequency: Rare in general Latin; relatively common in medical-botanical texts because many drug names are formed in this way.
So is aiin merely a suffix for plants, among other things?
Otherwise: Based on the above, the following variants remain:
aiXu (X = variable for one or more letters)
Aium
aXium
aiXum
With X = st = aiXu: If one reads ‘ai’ as “ae” and the final ‘u’ as a true -u (or -um), one gets aestu (ablative of aestus = heat).
With ai = ae and X = qu, one can think of aequu(m) → aequum. Aequum = meaning flat terrain, flat surface
‘aXium’ = alium (accusative of alius ‘the other’)
and, particularly appropriate in botany, allium/Allium (garlic/leek genus).
And apium (celery).
With X = ‘tr’ you get atrium = plenty of room for speculation ?.
And -arium is a productive suffix, especially in a botanical context (e.g. herbarium, rosarium).
Here, one might perhaps recognise several productive endings of plant names too – I am confused by the number of i's in ain, aiin aiiin.
My assessment: difficult... Aiin and its variants occur too frequently, but I don't want to attempt a translation in this thread, just to show what is factually and hypothetically possible ?.
I also stick with ‘duo’, which is what you read when you mirror the word ?.
The ch and sh ligature
I already explained this in another thread, but I'll repeat it here (sorry about that) so that this thread is complete:
[attachment=11879]
We may have three different spellings of ‘sh’ here. I say ‘may’ because these (extremely) small superscript letters could also all be a 9 or an S, as that is the most common form – I would say in well over 90 per cent of cases. But like Stolfi, I am now also convinced that large parts of the script were painted over at a later date.
I also believe that the text was copied from an older, more illegible text – so that a multitude of problems could have greatly altered the original text and made it nearly "indecipherable". So....
First version:
The sign which looks like a mirrored c stands for ‘us, os, is, s’ (see above) so the letters can be inserted here. But also a 9 with a straight tail pointing downwards. But mostly at the end of a word.
However, it can also indicate that this is inserted into the word via consonants.
Second version
The small 9 above the ligature stands for ‘er’.
[attachment=11880]
The book is written in German, and it says: A symbol very similar to ‘us’ is sometimes found above certain consonants with the meaning ‘he’, but not at the end of the word, as in
In the last, third version, the symbol stands for ‘cir’.
[attachment=11881]
And then this character can also belong to the first c and represent an S – together with c / t. Sc or St usualy meant sanct (which doesn't make much sense, given how often it occurs here):
And of course "sit / sunt / esse"
[attachment=11884]
And here we come to the most interesting version: esse
Of course, the ‘ch’ can also be an ee/ss, standing for “esse” and ‘sunt’, as well as sit.
[attachment=11885]
And so we have an ee with a stroke above it.... And who wouldn't be reminded of our ‘ch’?
This gives us one of the most productive translations for ch.
This would explain the multitude of these words very well. I would say we have cleared that up.
and here different Versions of sh:
[attachment=11886]
All right, that's it for now. I have more interesting Ligatures and Brevigraphs to share, and I hope I haven't presented anything here that was already completely obvious to everyone.
Definition
Ligatures:
Individual characters created by joining two or more letters, often to improve legibility or speed up writing.
Brevigraphs:
Special shorthand characters that abbreviate common words or endings in medieval Latin, such as a ‘9’-shaped character for ‘-us’ or a stroke above the line for missing letters.
My sources, unless otherwise stated
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The Basics:
[attachment=11872]
First, here are the classics of Brevigraphs, as I will refer to this list again and again throughout this article.
Of particular interest for VM is the ‘9’ as a very productive prefix and suffix for con, com, cum, cun, us, os, is s. – normally superscripted, which of course does not prevent us from interpreting the eva ‘y’ as just that.
This brings us to the similarities in VM.
This bloody "aiin"
[attachment=11875]
Here, the ending looks like the end of aiin, but it is a ‘u’ with a curved abbreviation stroke (titulus) indicating that letters are missing before the u (in this case, a t). This leads to the conclusion that the word aiin could also be ‘aiu’ with one or more letters simply missing.
(Actu is the ablative singular form of ‘actus’ and means ‘through the act’, ‘in the action’ or ‘through the deed’.)
[attachment=11876]
Here we have the classic Aiin ending, which means ‘mum’, although in rapid writing the ‘m’ counterstroke does not necessarily have to be written.
(Note: I assume that neither ‘o’ nor ‘a’ are stable in the Voynich text (!) and use them freely)
Aiin = -amum and -omum are not Latin suffixes in the strict sense. The actual suffix is -um. Endings such as balsamum, amomum, cinnamomum, cardamomum, opobalsamum are loan words from Greek (-amon/-ōmon → in Latin -amum/-omum), especially for spices, resins and plant names.
Frequency: Rare in general Latin; relatively common in medical-botanical texts because many drug names are formed in this way.
So is aiin merely a suffix for plants, among other things?
Otherwise: Based on the above, the following variants remain:
aiXu (X = variable for one or more letters)
Aium
aXium
aiXum
With X = st = aiXu: If one reads ‘ai’ as “ae” and the final ‘u’ as a true -u (or -um), one gets aestu (ablative of aestus = heat).
With ai = ae and X = qu, one can think of aequu(m) → aequum. Aequum = meaning flat terrain, flat surface
‘aXium’ = alium (accusative of alius ‘the other’)
and, particularly appropriate in botany, allium/Allium (garlic/leek genus).
And apium (celery).
With X = ‘tr’ you get atrium = plenty of room for speculation ?.
And -arium is a productive suffix, especially in a botanical context (e.g. herbarium, rosarium).
Here, one might perhaps recognise several productive endings of plant names too – I am confused by the number of i's in ain, aiin aiiin.
My assessment: difficult... Aiin and its variants occur too frequently, but I don't want to attempt a translation in this thread, just to show what is factually and hypothetically possible ?.
I also stick with ‘duo’, which is what you read when you mirror the word ?.
The ch and sh ligature
I already explained this in another thread, but I'll repeat it here (sorry about that) so that this thread is complete:
[attachment=11879]
We may have three different spellings of ‘sh’ here. I say ‘may’ because these (extremely) small superscript letters could also all be a 9 or an S, as that is the most common form – I would say in well over 90 per cent of cases. But like Stolfi, I am now also convinced that large parts of the script were painted over at a later date.
I also believe that the text was copied from an older, more illegible text – so that a multitude of problems could have greatly altered the original text and made it nearly "indecipherable". So....
First version:
The sign which looks like a mirrored c stands for ‘us, os, is, s’ (see above) so the letters can be inserted here. But also a 9 with a straight tail pointing downwards. But mostly at the end of a word.
However, it can also indicate that this is inserted into the word via consonants.
Second version
The small 9 above the ligature stands for ‘er’.
[attachment=11880]
The book is written in German, and it says: A symbol very similar to ‘us’ is sometimes found above certain consonants with the meaning ‘he’, but not at the end of the word, as in
In the last, third version, the symbol stands for ‘cir’.
[attachment=11881]
And then this character can also belong to the first c and represent an S – together with c / t. Sc or St usualy meant sanct (which doesn't make much sense, given how often it occurs here):
And of course "sit / sunt / esse"
[attachment=11884]
And here we come to the most interesting version: esse
Of course, the ‘ch’ can also be an ee/ss, standing for “esse” and ‘sunt’, as well as sit.
[attachment=11885]
And so we have an ee with a stroke above it.... And who wouldn't be reminded of our ‘ch’?
This gives us one of the most productive translations for ch.
This would explain the multitude of these words very well. I would say we have cleared that up.
and here different Versions of sh:
[attachment=11886]
All right, that's it for now. I have more interesting Ligatures and Brevigraphs to share, and I hope I haven't presented anything here that was already completely obvious to everyone.
: esse / sunt / sit and take!
(I've been working on it for a while now.)