“Lapsus Calami” – the name of the most popular column in Panay News – is Latin.
“Lapsus” means lapse, slip or error while “calami” (genitive of “calamus”) refers to pen.
Calamus is a type of sturdy reed. By extension, it may also refer to objects made from the reed’s stalk during ancient times such as a pen, arrow or eve a fishing rod.
It is said that the first to use reed pens were scribes from Ancient Egypt in the 4th century BC for writing on papyrus. They would dip reed pen into an ink and it would retain some ink at the endpoint.
