Frightened but not surprised

Question

For purposes of a motto, what is the grammatically correct way of saying "Frightened but not surprised" in Latin? Best effort so far is "Petrificata sed non sorpresa". What are your thoughts?

Background: Would like to refine a humerous expression for people who have worked on many surprisingly stressful situations, initially expecting things should have been much easier than they turned out to be but now prepared for the worst and therefore, jokingly, scared. The reason i used petrified in my first attempt is because its a bit of a joke so ok to exaggerate.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, your attempt suffers from two problems:

• Petrificatus, -a, -um simply means “turned to stone.” It is not usually used figuratively, as in English.
• Sorpresa is perfectly correct and does mean “surprised,” just not in Latin (it's Italian).

From your explanation, I take it that you want to describe a woman/girl that is expecting terrible things, and therefore fearful of what will come, but who is not oblivious to the danger and will not be surprised when things turn out difficult.

I would therefore suggest: metuens sed non inopinans – literally: “afraid (apprehensive), but not unsuspecting.” Metus is the fear of impending evil, a justified apprehension. Inopinans is often used in a military context, when an enemy is caught unprepared. This expression happens to be gender-neutral, so it works for males as well.

By the way, I believe you can also make this even a little crisper by saying: metuens nec inopinans. Nec (= neque) really means “and not,” but where the joined elements do not really complement each other, it is often translated as “but not.”

Answer 2

Students sometimes confuse present participles (verbal adjectives which describe what a noun is doing) with gerunds (verbal nouns which are things with an active quality). Examples of the former are in Sebastian's answer; the latter, the Jack-Nicholson film, "The Shining" (1980)--the shining was a psychic power--a noun with a verbal quality.

Here, the nominatives of the gerunds (the infinitives): "metuere sed non deprehendere" = "(the) fearing but not (the) surprising".

EDIT 19/9/2023:

Thanks to Brian and Sebastian. This was far trickier than I'd anticipated! The original answer was, "metuere sine deprehendendo" = "(the) fearing without (the) surprising". This, not necessarily incorrect, as just obscure and might have sounded odd to Roman ears. These things are worth knowing.

The use of "deprehendo" = "surprise" is attested: "cum sine duce et sine equitatu deprehensis hostibus..." = "when having surprised the enemy without either general or cavalry..." (Caes. de Bel. Gal. 7.52.2).