“It could indeed mean ‘bastards’ (though it’s not the usual word, which is spurius or nothos).” “Illegitimi is a real Latin word,” Fontaine wrote. So this thing from my childhood is permanently on people’s bodies.” “I’ll tell you the weird thing about it,” Atwood told Time magazine about the quote this spring. But various forms of the phrase actually go back much further than Handmaid itself as Atwood herself said, the motto was a joke when she was in school, too. If it were a real phrase, it would roughly translate to “don’t let the bastards grind you down.” Outside the world of the book, the phrase has taken on a life of its own, as a sort of feminist rallying cry for women-and even within the book, it inspires Offred to fight back against the repressive powers that be. It’s a made-up phrase in mock Latin-a schoolboy’s joke, as it’s explained in both the novel and the series. Technically speaking, “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”-a phrase found in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale and, more recently, its TV adaptation that was just renewed for a second season on Hulu-means nothing. It’s one of the most iconic phrases in modern literature-as evidenced by the bevy of women who have it scrawled across their bodies in tattoo form.
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