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This paper is an attempt to bring fresh support to an etymology of labarum which has been suggested several times before but without ga in in g general approval, mainly because of insufficient evidence. The new arguments here put forward are both psychological and linguistic, and have historical parallels. Attention is directed in especial to a subterfuge in popular Latin for circumventing one aspect of patrii sermonis egestas, ‘dyssyntactic indeclinables’, by adopting another word.

A mode of perception as from an external viewpoint having been first established as the basis of an idiom in Greek, this principle is then used to explain the words τρίοδος and trivium (to which, significantly, there are no exact equivalents in English). It also clarifies certain temporal idioms, and the so-called ≪inclusive reckoning≫ of the ancients (as in trieterica - ≪biennial festival≫) is shown to be something more than what is ordinarily understood by that term, ≪extended inclusion≫ bein g suggested in its place.