does anyone on here speak or read latin???
I need to have the following translated into Latin for a tattoo I've been putting off for too long: 'never tell me the odds.' No matter where I turn, there doesn't seem to be a Latin equivalent for 'odds.' Or 'probability.' Please help. Please? Thank you in advance for you prompt attention to this matter.
I took 3 years of Latin, so for what it's worth, if it were my skin getting inked I'd choose "fortuna" (or plural "fortunae"), which translates to chance. Fortuna was the Roman goddess of luck. You won't find a Latin root for the word "odds." The etymology shows that the word didn't exist until the 1500s. Check out this from http://jeff560.tripod.com/o.html
ODDS. The . . . earliest quotation is from 1560 and involves the phrase to "lay odds." Unlike the roughly contemporary word "probability," the word "odds" has always been associated with gambling. Almost as soon as there was a probability literature in English the word "odds" appeared in it. It appears only once in the translation (1714) of Huygens’s tract on games of chance but is more common in De Moivre's The Doctrine of Chances (1718). However "odds" was not confined to works on gambling. It could be used wherever "probability" appeared. The two appear together in, e.g., Simpson’s On the Advantage of Taking the Mean (1755) and Bayes’s Essay (1763). These essays were not about gambling and nor was John Michell’s "Inquiry into the Probable Parallax, and Magnitude of the Fixed Stars, from the Quantity of Light Which They Afford us, and the Particular Circumstances of Their Situation," Philosophical Transactions, 57, (1767), 234-264. This gave the odds that the Pleiades is a system of stars and not a random agglomeration. Probability authors have continued to use "odds" along with "probability" for variety and for dramatic effect.
Odds are, that was probably too much information. Haha.
Just like Han Solo !
I took 4 years of latin, but ^she already knocked out the question pretty well. 'Sorta' is another word with basically the same meaning (the same word is used for myriad meanings) which would be something similar casting lots, or luck (i.e. chance).
When I translated the Aeneid, the term for casting lots was often used for 'chance' or 'fate of the gods'. Whichever noun you choose, make sure that all the words have the proper declensions otherwise you will look like a moron.
Step back. Evaluate. Recognize.
Why in Latin? Sticking to a language that you already know is probably a better idea, otherwise it just comes off as pretentious, like all those WoW guilds with Latin names, or embarrassing tattoos in Chinese characters. If you really want a tattoo in Latin, you should go with something like bigus dickus or incontinentia buttocks.
This is a really good idea.
i had two and a half years of latin... didn't realize we had so many joint years of that here. drake and memetician nailed it 
ODDS. The . . . earliest quotation is from 1560 and involves the phrase to "lay odds." Unlike the roughly contemporary word "probability," the word "odds" has always been associated with gambling. Almost as soon as there was a probability literature in English the word "odds" appeared in it. It appears only once in the translation (1714) of Huygens’s tract on games of chance but is more common in De Moivre's The Doctrine of Chances (1718). However "odds" was not confined to works on gambling. It could be used wherever "probability" appeared. The two appear together in, e.g., Simpson’s On the Advantage of Taking the Mean (1755) and Bayes’s Essay (1763). These essays were not about gambling and nor was John Michell’s "Inquiry into the Probable Parallax, and Magnitude of the Fixed Stars, from the Quantity of Light Which They Afford us, and the Particular Circumstances of Their Situation," Philosophical Transactions, 57, (1767), 234-264. This gave the odds that the Pleiades is a system of stars and not a random agglomeration. Probability authors have continued to use "odds" along with "probability" for variety and for dramatic effect.
Odds are, that was probably too much information. Haha.
Jeez, everybody around here took Latin, huh? I took three semesters.
Also, I like you.
I would suggest you get it done in Klingon language. Then everyone will shit bricks when they see you've crossed a Star Wars quote with a Star Trek language.
okay, I think I'm good. Thanks everybody that contributed. And yeah, it's a Star Wars quote. Whatever, it's only a piece of the puzzle.
Ependsday ooswhay askingyay.