“Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare,” translated immediately as “If you don’t swing, don’t ring” warned a bronze plaque above the doorbell of the Playboy Mansion at 1340 N State Parkway in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. In the Roman novel Satyricon, the nouveau-riche host Trimalchio adorns his home with all manner of cultural capital and status symbols. Did Hugh Hefner have something similar in mind with the installation this made-up Latin phrase at the entrance to the home of Playboy “enterprises”? Or was fake Latin just fun?
Various forms of fake Latin are commonplace in comedy. John Oliver lampoons himself as “hostus mostus” and in similar fashion pokes fun at a variety of other features of his show in the scenes that flash by at the start of “Last Week Tonight” on HBO.