Someone wrote this quote or saying down on a piece of paper for me and
I have no idea what it means?

"Consternatio est extinctor gloria"

Can someone please translate this and tell me the meaning as well as
the source if any?

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 14 Mar 2005 13:15 PST

I have not found this Latin quote in any reference source. Would you
be satisfied with a translation?

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Clarification of Question by markinsyd-ga on 14 Mar 2005 13:22 PST

A translation would be great.

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Request for Question Clarification by markj-ga on 14 Mar 2005 16:44 PST

markinsyd --

Each of the three nouns in the quote could be translated in several
similar but quite distinct ways.  Do you have any clue from the
context in which the piece of paper was given to you, or who gave it
to you, what the general topic of the quote is likely to be?  For
example, might it have to do with fame? Or ambition? Fear? Confusion? 
Any hints at all would be helpful.

markj-ga

I would translate "Consternatio est extinctor gloria" as
"Consternation is the slayer of glory." I have been unable to find any
online reference to back this up, however.

If this is satifactory as an answer, I'll be glad to repost it as such.

It might also be translated as "fear is the death of honor" (as in
"the end of honor" or "the limitation of honor")

tutuzdad-ga

They just barely let me pass my Latin courses, and I would like to
agree with Pinkfreund  (that's what fingers used to typing German do, 
but I like it :)  ),
but my check with a couple of online dictionaries does find "extinctor".  
And if it exists, shouldn't "gloria" be in the genitive  - gloriae?
And - as I remember (not much ^^!) -  in classical Latin in such a
short phrase, the "est" would have been left out, assumed as
self-evident - or would appear last.

So, maybe, the phrase is not a serious quotation but a modern attempt
to latinize some halfway current English phrase.  ??

I meant to say that I could  n o t  find "extinctor", but now I have, as 
"exstinctor", and the example did use the genitive:  "exstinctor patriae".

Myoarin,

I agree that the Latin in this phrase is questionable, but the
customer was not asking us to convert the phrase to proper Latin. The
question, as I understood it, was to make sense of the phrase in
English. I hope the customer will help us by providing a little
context or backstory.

~Pink

Pinkfreud,
fair enough. I was pursuing the feeling that if the Latin is faulty,
then maybe the phrase as given is someone's attempt to latinize
something and unlikely to be a quotation from a classical source (but
you'd have found it).
Yours and tutuzdad's translations fit the words, but  - I hope you
agree -  don't seem very satisfying, at least to me.
Servus

Perhaps the quote is expressing similar sentiments to the English
saying "He who hesitates is lost."