The Bayeux tapestry

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hi everyone/anyone,

I’m doing an analysis of the Bayeux tapestry and hade come across a small problem.
In the line: “Ubi Harold et Wido parabolant” I have a problem grapsing what the word “parabolant” means. I know it’s translated with “converse” in many online versions. I can’t find it in any of my dictionarys and I don’t want to go on without understanding it.
I guess it’s in third person, plural, and I think it’s in the present tense. Am I right so far?
Happy for any help I can get!
/Cikada

2

It looks like a Mediæval word, the origin of French parler and Italian parlare; the word for “word” in these languages is respectively “parole” and “parola.”

3

It’s actually a graecism, derived from πα?αβολή: parable, which came to just mean ‘word’, under Christian influence in the Middle Ages, where ‘parabolare’, the verb derived from it, basically meant ‘to talk, speak’. The oldest source that the Niermeyer lexicon lists is 678 A.D. in the ‘Visio Baronti’.

4

Κάλλιστόν γε!