A quick death???

[Jollyrei]

You know ancient Greek pretty well. I'm not doing so well with it. It's "highly inflected", and has lots of verb moods. I think Russian is related to it, and I didn't have a lot of success with Russian either. I had to take four years of Latin in school. I still have trouble reading it since I don't practice. It took me forever to translate the Monty Python motto "Futuaris nisi irresus ridebis". As far as I can tell, Futuaris is a passive subjunctive, which is used in a wish. So, I think it says "get fucked if you will not laugh at a joke". My dicitionary does say that futuare is "vulgar".

Or to put it into its more common English usage: "Fuck you if you can't take a joke."

 

[Eulalia]

A pretty good effort with some Pythonesque Latin Yes, futuaris is 'you'd be fucked' (French foutou)
But if the consequence is in the subjunctive, that implies a hypothetical condition,
so the other verb should also be subjunctive, nisi rideas, 'unless (hypothetically) you were to laugh',
but I think it would be better to make it an indicative statement, Futueris nisi ... rides 'you're fucked if you don't laugh'
And (what should be) irrisus is the passive past participle of irridere, 'laughed at, mocked, teased'.
So I'd understand 'futueris nisi irrisus rides' as 'You're fucked if you don't laugh when you've been laughed at',
i.e. (roughly) 'Fuck you if you can't take a joke'.

(PS which I see Jolly's posted while I was working on this )

Checking the history of this phrase, before my time, that's evidently what Eric Idle intended it to mean

 

[Frank Petrexa]

A pretty good effort with some Pythonesque Latin Yes, futuaris is 'you'd be fucked' (French foutou)
But if the consequence is in the subjunctive, that implies a hypothetical condition,
so the other verb should also be subjunctive, nisi rideas, 'unless (hypothetically) you were to laugh',
but I think it would be better to make it an indicative statement, Futueris nisi ... rides 'you're fucked if you don't laugh'
And (what should be) irrisus is the passive past participle of irridere, 'laughed at, mocked, teased'.
So I'd understand 'futueris nisi irrisus rides' as 'You're fucked if you don't laugh when you've been laughed at',
i.e. (roughly) 'Fuck you if you can't take a joke'.

(PS which I see Jolly's posted while I was working on this )

Checking the history of this phrase, before my time, that's evidently what Eric Idle intended it to mean

I interpret the subjunctive as a wish: "May you be fucked". Whether the subsequent verb should also be subjunctive (hypothetical) or just a future (if it turns out you won't laugh at a joke) is a good question. I'd lean toward indicative (one isn't sure whether "you" will laugh or not, but if you don't "may you be fucked". I would assume the speaker doesn't have control of the fucking, so a wish is appropriate.
No wonder the Roman Empire went under--too much grammatical analysis.