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I am trying to say "last wednesday" in Latin; as in "Last Wednesday I went to the store." I think it might be something along the lines of Praeterita hebdomas, but want to double check this.

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It seems an appropriate word is proximus. Thus, "Last Wednesday I went [in]to the shop" would be:

Proximo die Mercurii adii in tabernam

(where, as noted by Joonas, proximo die are in the ablative case, meaning a more literal translation would be something like "I went [to X] on last Wednesday", but in English the "on" is usually omitted).

Notice proximus is also used to indicate "next", but I think the verb alone indicates it is the past and so it is "last Wednesday" rather than "next Wednesday".

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  • Strangely enough, in English, many expressions for a time, like "last Wednesday", "Friday", "next month", can function just like an ablative in Latin! I've found this helpful when explaining to native English speakers who Latin's ablative case works: "like that, but for all nouns, and marked with a case."
    – Ben Kovitz
    Sep 17, 2019 at 16:35
  • For "the store" in your example sentence, what do you think of taberna or mercatus?
    – Ben Kovitz
    Sep 18, 2019 at 0:14
  • Thanks! this is all quite helpful.
    – Paul H.
    Sep 18, 2019 at 1:47
  • @BenKovitz taberna looks good, actually. Thanks.
    – luchonacho
    Sep 18, 2019 at 8:28
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    @luchonacho I'd use in for actually going into the store to buy things. If you were planning to hang around in the general area around the shop, then ad is more appropriate, but that doesn't seem to be the OP's case.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    Sep 19, 2019 at 10:23

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