Questions tagged [ablative]
For questions about the ablative case.
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Mirabile visu, horribile dictu ― is this the ablative?
Are the expressions "mirabile visu", and "horribile dictu", in the ablative case? If so, shouldn't it be "mirabili visu", and "horribili dictu"?
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Determining dative vs ablative for coelo
In a piece of fiction my wife recently read, she encountered this bit of latin
carminibus coelo possent deducere luman
Is coelo in ablative or dative case? Assuming both carminibus and coelo are ...
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Why do so many Latin prepositions of place take the accusative and not the ablative to express location?
When talking about the locative case, Latin grammars generally say that its usage was mostly taken over by the ablative case in Latin. For example: Allen and Greenough say:
Relations of Place are ...
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Where does the ablative go in a Latin sentence ? Does it even matter?
I'm learning Latin on my own with the book "Beginner's Latin" by Collar & Daniell, I recently reached Chapter IV where the ablative is introduced with the preposition In, my problem with ...
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in terra pax “in“ hominibus bonae voluntatis
Does the occurrence of “in” before “hominibus”, which seems to be found in some but not all renderings of this verse, follow usual Latin usage? A plain dative seems like it would work to me (pax ...
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Should “cum” be included in this sentence or not?
I have a sentence that I need to translate:
Having left the forum with haste, ... etc
And I'm translating it as "e foro cum celeritate egressi, ..." (the rest of the sentence refers to ...
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Why is that which is spoken of expressed as in + ablative?
Vīta est spīrandī mūnere fruī, mors prīvārī. Hoc autem spīrandī mūnus apud plērōsque in bonīs dicitur.
Livet er å nyte Guds* åndingsgave; døden å berøves [den]. Denne pustingas gave anses dermed i de ...
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Is it possible for adverbs, such as utique, to be used as adjectives?
Reading Ambrose Dē bonō mortis 4.14, I came across this passage:
Sed ipsa hīc vīta bona sī est, quibus rēbus bona est? Virtūte utique, et bonīs mōribus.
But if this life here is a Good, by which ...
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What is the ablative construction at play here?
I am reading Historia plantarvm vniuersalis. There are many sentences I do not understand, but the particular one I would like to ask about is on page 10 (page 26 in the link):
Literal transcription:
...
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Conquering darkness by science
I just found that the motto of the Free University of Brussels (VUB) in Belgium is the following:
Scientia vincere tenebras
This should stand for "conquering darkness by science". This can ...
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Does accipio take the ablative?
In the sentence:
...quō ubi accēpit, in agrum quem arāverat magnā cum dīligentiā
sparsit.
quo could either be the adverb meaning where/whereupon, or it could be the relative pronoun, assuming that ...
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Can the ablative of agent and a relative pronoun be used at the same time?
Here is an example of an ablative of agent for living things:
"Puella a puero amata" = the girl loved by the boy
But is it correct if I add a relative pronoun to form:
"Puella quae a ...
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Use of accusative instead of ablative with 'pro'
I saw written in a coat of arms "PRO MARE NOSTRVM", but we all know that the preposition "pro" takes ablative, so the right form would be "PRO MARI NOSTRO" wouldn't it?
I ...
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Redundancy of “quo” with “de”
Passage: “Quo de genere mortis difficile dictu est.” Cic. Amic. 12
English translation (from Loeb): “It is hard to speak of the nature of his death.”
French translation : “Quant à la nature de sa ...
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On different expressions of partitivity in Latin
I was wondering whether there is any difference between the following partitive expressions in Latin: ūnus tribūnōrum and ūnus ex tribūnīs 'one of the tribunes' (cf. the so-called 'partitive genitive' ...
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Ablatives of Agent in Ablative Absolutes in Early Latin?
It is (often) said that participles in Ablative Absolutes in Early Latin have an adjectival nature (e.g., see Ruppel (2013: 124): "the Early Latin Ablative Absolute is not strongly verbal at all"). ...
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Ave Verum Corpus: why ablative?
Ave Verum Corpus ("Hail, true Body!") is a short Latin poem that was set to music by Mozart. For most of it, the language is quite plain and straightforward.
However, there's a bit in the middle ...
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What is the longest sequence of ablative/dative nouns ever to appear in Latin texts
I was intrigued by my question to ask this question. In that questions we have a sequence of 2 ablative nouns in a row:
"[Dama] differt a capreis [solis] cornibus ..."
I don't count solis because ...
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How did the preposition "de" evolve into meaning "from"?
I see that in reconstructed PIE "de" or "do" has a meaning of "towards" which is retained in Germanic "to" and Slavic "do". But in Latin "de" has a meaning of "from". Is that simply due it taking the ...
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Can a "dative of agent" appear in an Ablative Absolute construction (and, more generally, in a non-verbal context)?
I was wondering to what extent the syntactic distribution of so-called “datives of agent” and that of “ablatives of agent” is different. For example, besides appearing in verbal contexts (e.g., ...
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Why is the form "Antares" used as an ablative in some Latin texts?
Jam inquiro nomen stellae Antares. Multa documenta quae "ab Antares" dicunt comperi. At non scio ablativi qui in "es" terminantur. Potestne nomen "Antares" indeclinabile esse? Quare?
Exempla:
"Lanx ...
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Declension uncertainty regarding Ablative / Nominative
I'm struggling, particularly, with determining the correct case for some of the words in the following expressions:
Natura est semper invicta
Here, is the word "invicta" in Ablative or Nominative ...
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In memoriam: why not "in memoria"?
Consider this usual example of Latin+English:
As Wiktionary states, in memoriam literally means "into memory" (memoriam is in accusative case). However, as Wiktionary (above) and Wikipedia state, the ...
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Disambiguation of "nobis vobis" and "nobis nobis"
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 "...
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Ablative of Specification or Dative of Reference
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 ...
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The Nominative Case Uses
Spinoza writes in the last passage of Ethics:
Cum contra sapiens, quatenus ut talis consideratur, vix animo movetur, sed sui et Dei et rerum aeterna quadam necessitate conscius nunquam esse desinit,...
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"Fīliolō me auctum scito, salva Terentia"; what is "me" role in this phrase?
Is "Fīliolō me" the ablative of the phrase or "me" refers to "me auctum" in the accusative? If is in the ablative, how does it translates?
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Nemo te alius pari potestate saepius profuit (Apul. Florida 9)
Would you consider te to be dependent from pari ("with a position as powerful as yours") or saepius ("more often than you")?
par can be constructed with simple ablative, but rarely and more common is ...
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Why would the praeposition "per" ᴇᴠᴇʀ take an ablative instead of an accusative complement?
ᴘᴇʀ + ᴀʙʟ.: Barbarism, solœcism, or diachronic evolution?
Lewis and Short clearly state that per is a praeposition whose
normal complement is in the accusative. Without having dol...
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Why is the ablative used here instead of the genitive
Mark 1:6 starts with
Et erat Joannes vestitus pilis cameli...
Which is translated as "John was clothed with camel's hairs...."
Why is it pilis instead of pilorum? Shouldn't pilis use genitive ...
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Regarding the mode of "terram" in Deuteronomy 28:38
Deuteronomy 28:38 reads:
Sementem multam jacies in terram, et modicum congregabis: quia locustæ devorabunt omnia.
I think the first phrase before the comma has the following structure (but ...
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Consecutive ablatives
Consider the phrase
I met in Rome with a friend
As far as I know, "in Rome" and "with a friend" both represent the ablative case in Latin. Thus, the above could be translated as
convēnī Rōmā ...
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Ablative of Comparison w/ Relative Pronoun?
Fairly frequently in Latin one encounters a "backwards" comparison, in which the relative pronoun in the ablative precedes the term of comparison.
...philosophiam ad te adlegem, qua nec ...
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How do we know that Italian words come from accusatives, not ablatives?
I have been told by several sources that Italian nouns and adjectives that originate from Latin come from accusative forms.
Also the final -m is lost and an u becomes o.
For example, caro > carnem > ...
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Can the absolute ablative be used with a prepositional phrase?
In all cases of ablativus absolutus that I know, there is a main word and an attribute and both are in ablative.
For example, me absente is "while I am away" and Caesare duce is "when Caesar is in ...
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When and why did the ablative form?
When did the ablative originate? Additionally, I’d like to know which case was used before the ablative for adverbials. I think it replaced the dative, as I also study Ancient Greek. In that language, ...
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Help with what I believe is an ablative
Conferre nostris tu potes te laudibus?
Moror inter aras, templa perlustro deum;
ubi immolatur, exta praegusto omnia;
(Phaedrus, "Formica et Musca")
I understand it to mean "Are YOU able to ...
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Dative–ablative ambiguity
When I first looked into Latin, I saw in a textbook that the dative and ablative singular are the same in the second declension:
nom. servus
acc. servum
gen. servi
dat. servō
abl. servō
voc. serve
...
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Can I use an instrument with the supine ablative of respect?
If a book is easy to write, I might say liber facilis est scriptu.
Here the supine ablative scriptu is an ablative of respect (ablativus respectus).
If I want to be more specific about my writing, I ...
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Comparing ablative and genitive of quality
The ablative and genitive of quality (ablativus qualitatis and genetivus qualitatis) are similar.
One can describe a high mountain as mons magna altitudine or mons magnae altitudinis.
Is there any ...
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Genitive vs Ablative of Price
In Latin, worth or value can be expressed by the genitive or by the ablative. Here are some examples:
Genitive
Non pono utrique par pretium: pluris aestimo beneficium quam iniuriam. (Sen Ep. Mor. 81....
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In contemporary spoken Latin, do people mark the 1st-declension ablative case?
In contemporary spoken Latin, such as (I think) occurs among canon lawyers in the Vatican and at Latin-only conventicula, do people clearly lengthen the -ā at the end of first-declension nouns in the ...
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Is the unmarked 1st-declension ablative in writing ever jarring or confusing?
Occasionally while reading, I've mistaken a first-declension ablative for a nominative, or vice versa,* and gotten confused for a moment until I sorted it out. Both appear the same in writing, of ...
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When to use the Greek accusative?
The Greek accusative or the accusative of respect (accusativus Graecus or accusativus respectus) is used like the ablative of respect (ablativus respectus).
This construction is a loan from Greek, ...
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Does the "re" in emails have an ancient origin?
The Latin ablative re has become a word in English, meaning "regarding" or "with reference to" or something along those lines.
This is also used in emails as an automatically generated prefix "Re:&...
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Is "cum haruspex in templo cenaret" correct Latin in this sentence?
Cum haruspex in templo cenaret, rex ipse appropinquabat.
My problem is with the part in bold, firstly the cenaret, an imperfect subunctive does not agree with haruspex. (Or does it? I could be wrong.)...
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eadem mutata resurgo
What is the role of eadem mutata in this phrase? I'm guessing either neuter plural accusative of extent, or feminine nominative as apposition to an implied ego. The original context of this line is ...
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Which agents are human?
The agent of a passive construction is in ablative, and human agents also come with the preposition a/ab.
For example, Marcus a Gnaeo occisus est but Marcus sica occisus est.
But which agents should ...
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Why do ablatives of the 3rd declension sometimes end on -e, at other times on -i?
Normally, substantive nouns of the 3rd declension get an -e in the ablative (patre), and adjectives of the 3rd get an -i (audaci). This is already odd: normally, substantives and adjectives, both ...
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"Miserando atque eligendo"
There seem to be two schools of thought about the meaning of the motto on Pope Francis's coat of arms:
miserando atque eligendo
These words are taken from the 21st homily of the Venerable Bede, ...
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