Quōmodo verba "in my opinion" Latīnē loquī?

Question

In colloquial English (particularly in online discourse) the phrase "in my opinion" (often abbreviated as "imo/IMO") is quite common. I am wondering how one might express this in an idiomatic manner in Latin.

One could take the completely literal approach and simply write:

in meā sententīa, in sententiā meā, meā sententiā, vel sententiā meā

But my gut feeling tells me that the above would either (a) be intelligible to a Roman, but feel unnatural and unidiomatic or (b) be completely unintelligible to a Roman, and perhaps even ungrammatical.

In short: how would one express the English phrase "in my opinion" idiomatically, in Latin?

Answer 1

There are a number of ways you can say "in my opinion":

• Meā sententiā (without in!) works perfectly well, but you must be careful to distinguish it from ex mea sententia or (less common) de mea sententia, which both mean "according to my wish." A very common idiom that always means "in my opinion" is: meā quidem sententiā. Here are 21 examples, among which:

  et qui fugitivis servis indunt compedes,
  nimis stulte faciunt mea quidem sententia. (Plautus, Menaechmi 81)

• As Hugh mentioned, ut opinor is also common. Behold 187 examples, including:

  a primo, ut opinor, animantium ortu petitur origo summi boni. (Cicero de Finibus 2.10)

• Plautus also frequently uses meo [quidem] animo:

  item genus est lenonium inter homines meo quidem animo
  ut muscae, culices, cimices pedesque pulicesque (Plautus, Curculio 499)

• You also have just paraphrase with several phrases that can be found throughout the corpus: ut puto, ut arbitror, etc. Cicero also repeatedly uses the phrase ut mihi videtur.