"give back what is mine"
can be addressed to a
person or can be used as a noun, referring to the event or the
person.
said by women trying to get back their possessions from a guy, who has either stolen them or kept them for a long
time, these possessions usually being very feminine, with the suggestion that the guy might be using them. the guy is generally a dandy as the phrase is taken from a passage by Ovid in his Ars Amatoria:
"Sed vitate viros cultum formamque professos,
Quique suas ponunt in statione comas.
Quae vobis dicunt, dixerunt mille puellis: 435
Errat et in nulla sede moratur amor.
Femina quid faciat, cum sit vir levior ipsa,
Forsitan et plures possit habere viros?
Vix mihi credetis, sed credite: Troia maneret,
Praeceptis Priamo si foret usa satae. 440
Sunt qui mendaci specie grassentur amoris,
Perque aditus talis lucra pudenda petant.
Nec coma vos fallat liquido nitidissima nardo,
Nec brevis in rugas lingula pressa suas:
Nec toga decipiat filo tenuissima, nec si 445
Anulus in digitis alter et alter erit.
Forsitan ex horum numero cultissimus ille
Fur sit, et uratur vestis amore tuae.
'Redde meum!' clamant spoliatae saepe puellae,
'Redde meum!' toto voce boante foro. "
Avoid those men who profess to looks and culture,
who keep their
hair carefully in place.
What they tell you they’ve told a thousand
girls:
their
love wanders and lingers in no one place.
Woman, what can you do with a man more delicate than you,
and one perhaps who has more lovers too?
You’ll scarcely credit it, but credit this: Troy would remain,
if Cassandra’s warnings had been heeded.
Some will attack you with a lying pretence of
love,
and through that opening seek a shameful gain.
But
don’t be tricked by
hair gleaming with liquid nard,
or
short tongues pressed into their creases:
don’t be ensnared by a toga of finest threads,
or that there’s a ring on every
finger.
Perhaps the best dressed among them all’s a thief,
and burns with
love of your finery.
‘Give it me back!’ the girl who’s robbed will often cry,
‘Give it me back!’ at the
top of her voice in the cattle-market.
the redde meum usually takes place the day of the walk of shame, so that the woman, with her
cold materialism, might pretend as if nothing happened.
it can also take place when the woman is freaking out that the guy has severed ties, and the woman leaves something of hers purposely the night before
finally, it can take place when the guy is just being a douche and has deliberately stolen something post-severing ties. the woman does this, not only to get her shit back, but also to embarrass him (with possibly a hint of feeling still left).
