"How do you expect me to understand your altumal cant, without pondering on it?" –Maturin, to Aubrey, in The Fortune of War

This is an interesting one. It doesn’t appear in a lot of the usual sources. That might be because it’s self-evident to anyone with a working knowledge of Latin (that doesn’t really include me).

Because, in Latin, altum just means the Deep, or the Sea.

Thus, Maturin is saying to his Captain friend: Spare me your mariner’s jargon and just tell me what you want in plain words dammit.

The irony and the joy of it being that Aubrey IS using the plain words, like kevel, that mean exactly what they say, but Stephen doesn’t know them, even though he does know and employ Latinate ones, like altumal, that Jack in return doesn’t get himself.

The author, and we as readers if we’re literate or dogged enough, get to see the dilemma from both horns.

Going beyond the single page we could say:

Greta Thunberg’s altumal voyage.

Or in symbolic terms:

The altumal depths of one’s passionate lust.

For the Other, for success on whatever idiosyncratic terms, for Life itself.