Dominus Litis: Smear, smear, whoever you may be. I am the Lord of the Smear said he.

 I ran across the Latin legal phrase dominus lītis the other day, which means "the master of the suit." According to The Law Dictionary, it designates "the person who was really and directly interested in the suit as a party, as distinguished from his attorney or advocate." 

Not the most interesting phrase on its own, I suppose, but it caught my eye for two reasons: first, it was misspelled, and second, it was in a decision by a federal judge in an important case here in the States. The incorrect spelling was dominus litus. That would be an entirely different matter. It's a common enough mistake to make, assimilating first the sound and then the spelling of one word to another which it qualifies. Dominus litis too easily becomes dominus litus. 

The word lītis is the genitive singular of the noun līs, and means "of the suit."

So what would dominus litus mean? There are several possibilities, some of them amusing. 

Keep your eye on the length of the vowels. A short ĭ is pronounced as in English "fit," a long ī as in "feet." A short u is as in "but," a long ū as in "boot."

There are three possible words: 1) lītŭs, lītoris; 2) lĭtus, lĭtūs; and 3) lĭtus, lĭtī.

1) Lītŭs, a noun, means "beach" or "shore." In this form, dominus lītŭs would have to be taken to mean something like "master beach." But you can't just put nouns together like that in Latin, or even in Legal Latin. Perhaps in Harry Potter Latin. You would have to say something like dominus lītoris, "master of the beach."

2) A different noun lĭtŭs means "smearing, besmearing, anointing." As it happens, the genitive singular of this noun is lĭtūs, which yields up "the master of smearing." Given the identity of the dominus litis in the case I was reading about, that would be an apt description, but legally irrelevant. The suit isn't even about defamation.

3) Lĭtŭs can also be the perfect passive participle of the verb lĭno, which means "smear, besmear, anoint." If dominus lĭtŭs is taken this way, "the besmeared master" or "the anointed master" would be the translation. Again, this would be apt depending on what you think of this person in question.

Turning back to the correct noun, līs lītĭs, it is also true that before it came to have the technical meaning of "suit at law," it meant simply "strife" or "accusation." So "master of strife" or "master of accusation" also works.