I was recently asked to provide certified copies of my testamurs. I had to look in a dictionary to find out what a "testamur" is! How many people on this board know what a testamur is? (Without looking it up!)
Put me down for not knowing without looking it up. Actually, the word is not in my dictionary (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition.) I had to go to Dictionary.com to look it up. Can anyone recommend a good dictionary smaller than the OED, that has the word testamur defined in it? My wife's "Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary Unabridged New Second Edition DELUXE COLOR" has it but I refuse to use her dictionary because I think Noah Webster may have been the last lexicographer to have worked on it.
The beauty of the English language is that if a word looks right, use it. Nobody is going to challenge the usage because they wouldn't want the embarrassment of being wrong. Living in a country where French and English are usually side by side one gets the feel for the flexibility of English. The French version of a three word Engish expression may be ten words long and precisely correct, grammatically. Fewer and different shortcuts in French.
Based on what it looks like I would hazard a guess at meaning csomething like credentials? And perhaps educational credentials? Since you used it in this forum I would go further and guess either certified copies of your degrees or transcripts or certified letters from your schools that you did attend and graduate.
Sorry, you piqued my curiosity, so since I was unable to define the word using context clues, I looked it up. Why wouldn't transcripts of the courses that you took suffice? Darren.
The testamur is your diploma. I was awarded one when I graduated from UWS and it was called the testamur and not a diploma. John
testamur The use of a word changes within its context and fashion of the times. When my son was in the 7th grade the teacher asked the kids to develop a "rubric". I think websters listed the way she wanted the students to use rubric as the 5th definition. However, rubrics are "hot" education terminology. So to find the definition the teacher wanted, you really needed an education textbook. I think testamur would have the same root as testamony? Basically some sort of validation or documentation in the general sense. I could not find the word in the RandomHouse dictionary. Maybe an education text? All the best! Ira
John Wetsch is right. I figured this out eventually. It was for an Australian university, so perhaps this is the terminology used down under.
