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In statistics, a point that separates out (a multiple of) 25% of the data set is called a "quartile". Similarly, if it separates out 20% of the data, it's a "quintile", 1% a "percentile", and in ...

For many words, the dative and ablative take the same form. Two examples are nos and vos (nobis and vobis, respectively). Imagine you want to say something like "from us to you [plural]" (where "...

In English, imperative verbs have "invisible subjects": syntactically, they act like there's an invisible pronoun in the subject position. This is why we see look closely at yourself instead of *look ...

I am looking for a new name for my engineering company. I want to translate the English phrase 'Forward engineering' into Latin language.

Two of the most common words for "because" in Latin are quod and quia, both of which began as neuter forms of quī "who". (At some point quia got replaced with the feminine plural quae, though I don't ...

In the made-for-TV re-make of "Ben Hur", Hugh Bonneville played Pontius Pilate. At one point "Pilate" said: "Chariot-racing is not a sport for amateurs. And to compete and to lose would be worse than ...

I was looking through a feature in some Romance languages, Spanish and French, where nouns in Spanish change depending on gender. I was wondering if Latin had a few of these. Here are examples in ...

Linguistically, "clicks" are a type of sound found in certain African languages, mostly Khoisan and Southern Bantu. The English word is also used for various other sharp, high-pitched noises (like ...

The regular perfect them form for "he went" is iit. In an answer to this question about two short versus one long vowel, TKR mentions that this form can be contracted to īt. In a text without macrons ...

Decimātiō was a Roman term for a military punishment where a group was reduced by a tenth. But in modern English, decimation is used generically to mean 'greatly reduced or damaged', often in ...

The Greek word χριστός, used as a translation of Hebrew משיח "messiah", and meaning something like "anointed" (Liddell and Scott), apparently has a long vowel in the first syllable. The quantity of ...

The verb ignōscō, with the meaning "pardon, forgive", is explained in some sources as coming from the negative prefix in- and (g)nōscō. For example, Lewis and Short says "lit., not to wish to know, ...

The prefix in- can mean "in" or "into" or similar, as in inire. It can also mean "non-" or "un-", as in infelix. Both meanings of the prefix are attested, but I am not familiar with any case where ...

John Walker in his work A Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek, Latin, and Scripture Proper Names suggests pronouncing it as "Ebóracum": Are there any other sources of this word's ...

Wikipedia and other sites detail the (possibly legendary) ancient Roman "Calendar of Romulus": I'm curious about the suffixes to the "numbered" months, the fifth through tenth. The names of the ...

Is this auto-antonymy? I'm guessing this, as humans who love blood undeniably wouldn't want to lose it, let alone so effortlessly! I'd reckon that hemophiliac bodies DON'T love blood! If not, which ...

I recently came across the word "deigena" while reading c. 2, lectio 4 of Aquinas's Commentary on the Divine Names of [Pseudo-]Dionysius. This led me to discover what seems to be a productive suffix ...

In the text that I am reading now, the Greek word μονάδαι is used to indicate "units". I have understood it as a plural form of μονάς, however, I could only find μονᾰ́δε in the dual form and μονᾰ́δες ...

Would "Non Lapsus" be a good way of writing "Not Fallen" in Latin? (Lapsus chosen because it refers to the Biblical Fall of Man)

This question arose the other day in our chat room: What is a laptop in Latin? There are several possible ways to approach this. It feels most reasonable to me to take a word for "computer" and ...

I've read in various sources that the verb nosco 'know' had a long vowel in the first syllable in Classical Latin pronunciation: nōscō [noːskoː]. I'm wondering what the linguistic evidence is for the ...

Any latin, my tags aren't a mistake. The more variations the better thanks

Etymonline claims that abscissa originally meant 'cut off', but what's 'cut off' about an x-coordinate? X-coordinates are merely numbers, not lines. How did a word for 'cut off' come to be used for x-...

There seem to be certain words in Latin which start with an underlying /gn/, such as noscō /gnosko:/ [nɔsko:]—this "hidden" /g/ appears when prefixes are added, as in cognoscō /congnosko:/ [cɔŋnɔsko:] ...

What is an appropriate Latin word for a knob that controls something else, such as a volume control knob, a light dimmer, the tuning control on a radio, the temperature control knob on a space heater, ...

I see on Wiktionary that ἄελλα is related to ἄημι, which comes from the PIE root *h₂weh₁-, meaning "to blow". This explains ἄε, but not the rest. Prompted by the weird Alcaeus word αυεουλλαι glossed ...

North & Hillard Ex. 198 begins: "It was already dawning when the general gave the signal, promising a great reward to the first man who climbed the walls." The translation: "iam illucescebat cum ...

constitute {verb}     Etymology : [..] con- intensive + statuĕre to set up, place: [...] 6. To make (a person or thing) something; to establish or set up as. (With obj. and compl.) Cf. 2. 8....

Spinoza, Ethics, De Dei, Propositio 15, Scholium: Ego saltem satis clare meo quidem judicio demonstravi ... meo judicio is dative or ablative? I cant recognize that it is Ablative of ...

(Inspired by this question) Latin definitely had contact with Semitic languages over the course of its existence, most notably Punic. When words and names from these languages were transcribed into ...

Desideratum means "something that is desired", and quite often is used in philosophy to refer to the subject of a philosophical investigation. (Wiktionary, Merriam-Webster) I want another word, ...

I stumbled upon a two word motto a while ago that translated more or less as the tile above, I believe it started with the word “Simul”. Does this ring any bells with anyone?

The surviving Koine Greek corpus contains quite a lot of transcribed Semitic words, borrowed from Hebrew, Aramaic, and maybe others. (For example, the LXX is full of Hebrew names.) Were there ...

Answering a recent question, I've realized that I don't know how to say the following idiomatic expression in Latin (cf. Spanish: "A la tercera va la vencida"). Any suggestions? "Third time lucky" ...

according to wikipedia, the largest number Roman Numeral system can represent is represented like following: (answer below has much bigger number represented) MMMCMXCIX why can't it be represented ...

The English word "fit" has a number of different uses, and that makes searching difficult. I am looking for a verb or phrase to be used in a sentence like this: The souvenir does not fit in my bag. ...

In this answer, fdb mentions the Classical verb volō, velle transforming into *voleō, volēre in Vulgar Latin. The main evidence for this is a form volendi in Augustine and reflexes like voglio, volere ...

Lewis and Short has an entry for a noun tŭdes, with the genitive singular given as "is (ĭtis, acc. to Fest. p. 253 Müll.)". It is defined as "a hammer, mallet". The two citations in the entry show the ...

The words "I want" and "I fly" are both volō. Was there ever any difference in pronunciation in the classical era or later? I expect such differences to be more likely in vulgar Latin. The rest ...

In Spanish, the word cuesta is nowadays used as slope. Nonetheless, the etymology of the word indicates that it comes fom Latin costa, ae meaning "a side" but also "a rib". In fact, an old meaning for ...

Is perfect participle, in spite of the general notion, used both as perfect passive participle and perfect active participle? Spinoza, Ethics, De Dei, Propositio 15, Scholium: nam omnes qui ...

In their "Open Loop University" concept vision, Stanford introduces "populi" as the next conceptual step after "alumni". Examples of usage follow. "...we now have a populi of 215,000 ongoing students....

It is often said that one has an excellent command of a language when one is able to use it in an idiomatic way, which typically involves making use of Idioms and Collocations, i.a. There are many ...

If I want to describe the dimensions of my office, I might say that it is about two by four meters. How do I phrase this size, "two by four meters", in Latin? I don't just want to say that the area ...

Could someone translate the following into Koine Greek (or Testament Greek, if there were juicy differences.) We won’t tell Helen why we could leave her at the beach without company. The older ...

A question was asked on French stackexchange about ausculter as a medical term and when it started being used in that sense. The meaning seems to go back to the early 19th century and Laennec, the ...

I am a newbie to this language so I don't know where to start. I am ready to take a lot of effort and would really like to know how to master this language. How can I get started with learning Latin?

I don't understand the bolded phrase from HuffPost beneath. How isn't the notion of “throughout-the-whole” identical to 'universal''s 'certain sense of inclusivity' that 'necessarily implies exclusion'...

I don't understand the imagery in the quote below that I bolded: The centerpiece of his research is the etymology or origin of the word “catholic.” While we do commonly use it to mean “universal,” ...

In Ancient Greek, verbs often take a "middle voice", neither active nor passive. The forms usually look identical to the passive on the surface, but can take direct objects and cannot take an agent (...