On Wednesday, June 7, 2017 at 9:37:44 PM UTC+10, Peter Stewart wrote: > On 7/06/2017 8:35 PM, Doug Thompson wrote: > >> Sorry to disagree, but I don't think this quite works. > > You may be right but I should make a few more comments. > > > >> First, it doesn't appear to me that there could be enough letters before > >> "..us suus" on the fourth line from the bottom to read this as a word > >> longer than "avus". > > I disagree here. There is clearly more room used than is needed for avus. Can you see the tail of the "s" near the front of the line. Compare with the tail of the first S on suus. > > > >> Secondly, the Latin nominative singular for father-in-law is usually > >> "socer", rather than "socerus". > > I agree here. But I looked for a word which fitted "s.....us" which fitted the sense of the fine. Socerus is a known form, although I have only found socer before. It may be abbreviated. > > Well, it is very common to contract "er" to a mark, but I don't see the > likelihood of "soc'us" if the expanded form would be an aberration in > the first place. Was "socerus" really common enough to be useful in such > a conjecture? I don't rummage much in 13th-century documents (or any > records from England for that matter). What do Latham and Howlett say > about this form in *Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources*? A correspondent has kindly pointed out that this is now available for limited search online, here: http://www.dmlbs.ox.ac.uk/publications/online However, the variant form "socerus" is not included in DMLBS, while "socrus" appears only with the meaning "mother-in-law" (both are noted for father-in-law in Lewis & Short, but that is hardly to the purpose). Peter Stewart