70
votes
Is "history" a male-biased word ("his+story")?
While I'm sure a better-research answer might be able to give you more insight, perhaps a simple response will be a good place to start.
As you found, "history" comes from Greek ἱστορία (historia) ...
- 38.5k
54
votes
Feminine case 3rd-person version of “Veni, vidi, vici”
"Veni vidi vici" means "I came, I saw, I conquered."
"Venit vidit vicit" means "He/she/it came, he/she/it saw, he/she/it conquered." It doesn't make any ...
- 2,943
42
votes
Accepted
Is "history" a male-biased word ("his+story")?
"Herstory" is completely unrelated to the etymology of "history"
As others have mentioned, there is no etymological connection between the first part of "history" and the ...
- 26.6k
28
votes
Accepted
What gender should a predicate adjective be to agree with a series of things with different genders?
Bennett's New Latin Grammar (this link will take you to appropriate section) offers several helpful rules of thumb for the agreement of an adjective with multiple nouns.
Although I recommend reading ...
- 38.5k
23
votes
Accepted
When is "diēs" masculine, when is it feminine, and why can this word take different genders?
I believe there's no straightforward answer as to „why different usage contexts correlate to different grammatical gender“, but the etymological origin gives some insights to the gender.
Diēs comes ...
- 641
23
votes
Did Latin have the same gender labels that the Romance languages have?
Yes, Latin had a distinction between masculine and feminine nouns (and also a third category, "neuter"). This didn't always correspond to biology—homo "human" is always masculine, ...
- 64.7k
21
votes
Feminine case 3rd-person version of “Veni, vidi, vici”
It's:
Vēnit, vīdit, vīcit.
whether the subject is masculine, feminine, or neuter. Latin only has grammatical gender agreement between nouns and the adjectives that modify them. Subject-verb ...
- 15.8k
18
votes
Accepted
Are there nouns that change meaning based on gender?
The masculine noun flāmen denotes a type of priest. The etymologically unrelated neuter noun flāmen means 'a blast, gust (of wind)' or 'an exhalation, breath.'
Also, generally, the words for various ...
- 19.2k
16
votes
Accepted
Where do the plurals of locus come from?
As usual, to answer this question we need to step into our comparative linguistics-fueled time machine and go back to Proto-Indo-European times, so we can see what function the ending -a, which we ...
- 30.6k
16
votes
Accepted
Same ending of "Mediolanensis" in "Archiepiscopus Mediolanensis" and "Archidioecesis Mediolanensis"
There are two (main) classes of adjectives in Latin:
Some adjectives use the first declension for feminines (e.g. Romana, "Roman") and the second declension for masculines and neuters (e.g. Romanus ...
- 110k
16
votes
Accepted
Is any animal neuter in Latin?
Ostreum, -i n (seashell, oyster) gave the ancients trouble.
There is also a feminine form ostrea, -ae f, and the neutral form was disparaged on the grounds that there were no neutral animal names in ...
- 31.8k
14
votes
When is "diēs" masculine, when is it feminine, and why can this word take different genders?
I can only partially answer your question. In medieval documents dies is sometimes feminine where based on classical usage we would expect it to be masculine. Examples:
Liber Pontificalis1 (~10th ...
- 1,203
14
votes
Is "history" a male-biased word ("his+story")?
'Herstory' is not much more than a nonce-word. It's the sort of thing that used to be quoted by feminists in order to demonstrate how wrongfully the world, even the English language, had been arranged ...
- 18k
13
votes
Examples of "homo" used for a woman
Gender assignment in Latin is an issue too complex to cover in one post.
I follow Greville Corbett (e.g. Corbett 1991) in maintaining the difference between common nouns (grammatical gender varies ...
- 11.6k
13
votes
Is the phrase professor emerita grammatically correct?
In theory, the feminine of professor would be profestrix. However, this is a rather awkward formation, and isn't attested classically—the use of -trix on a dental-stem noun is incredibly rare in any ...
- 64.7k
13
votes
Why is Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum in the feminine?
Simply, it's because musica is a feminine noun.
As to why it might be plural, which is a separate question really, it seems here to mean something more akin to "musical arts." This isn't ...
cmw♦
- 50.8k
12
votes
Is there a gender-neutral pronoun for people in Latin?
It is important to distinguish between syntactic gender and semantic gender. As we all know, a word like centuria, "group of ca. 100 soldiers", is syntactically feminine, but semantically it is ...
- 19.8k
12
votes
Accepted
Does Latin have any neuter words for humans?
It depends on how much emphasis you put on "unambiguously refers to an individual human being". I don't know of any examples that are just like παιδίον or Mädchen. Several Latin grammars ...
- 26.6k
12
votes
Are there nouns that change meaning based on gender?
In fact, dies does have a slightly different meaning in the two genders.
The masculine is the more general meaning, but for specific meanings like an appointed special day or day as a deity you need ...
- 110k
12
votes
Why can "bubo" ("owl") be feminine or masculine?
The relevant passage is this one, from Aeneid IV.462-3:
sōlaque culminibus fērālī carmine būbo
saepe quer' et longās in flētum dūcere vōcēs
And the lone owl on the rooftops would cry out its mournful ...
- 64.7k
11
votes
When is "diēs" masculine, when is it feminine, and why can this word take different genders?
The OLD writes that dies is "fem. frequently or usually in senses 1b, 5, 7, 10, occasionally elsewhere," with the following definitions listed:
1b: [the period from sunrise to sunset] as a ...
- 551
11
votes
Wordplay with "Vox Populi" (populus, m vs. populus, f)
There is a small difference between the people and the tree:
vowel length.
Indicating long vowels with a bar and short ones with a cup as usual, the masculine word is pŏpŭlŭs and ...
- 110k
11
votes
Is any animal neuter in Latin?
In general, words referring to animate beings were not neuter in Latin. This goes for both words referring to types of humans and words referring to types of animals. (A small number of exceptions ...
- 26.6k
11
votes
Accepted
Why is it "Discipulus pulcher est" and not "Discipulus pulchrus est"?
There is no word pulchrus. The word in the masculine, nominative, singular is pulcher, and it is one of the 2nd declension noun and adjectives that end in -er.
There are many adjectives of this type, ...
cmw♦
- 50.8k
11
votes
Why does canis have both masculine and feminine forms?
Most Latin animal names have both a male and a female form, to express the animal's gender; the masculine is used when the gender is unknown.
If the masculine form is second-declension (e.g. "...
- 335
11
votes
What is the gender of the word "Haec" in Latin?
Haec is actually a accusative neuter plural in this case. It's not the subject of the sentence: post haec means "after these things". If you look at a paradigm for hic you'll see formally ...
- 8,647
10
votes
Is "history" a male-biased word ("his+story")?
As said already, history comes from the ancient greek ἱστορία. I am a native Greek, although my studies are not in literature, so I don't have as much info to provide as sumelic, for example.
However,...
- 201
10
votes
Accepted
Was "Pascha" ever used as a neuter first-declension noun?
Actually Du Cange (Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis) records a lot of examples of the neuter form Pascha, -ae, which he seems to prefer.
"Orat. et prec. de Pascha annotino"
"...
- 146
10
votes
regem Balæ, ipsa est Segor
Draconis and TKR are correct and explain how the Latin works, but just to add further context, it's the same in the Greek Septuagint:
καὶ βασιλέως Βαλακ αὕτη ἐστὶν Σηγωρ
Both the Latin and the Greek ...
cmw♦
- 50.8k
10
votes
Struggling with the neuter gender when translating this movie quote
I would get rid of the if…then construction here, and rely on the verbs: quod sanguinat perit, "that which [can] bleed, [can] perish". This is a bit less explicit about who's doing the ...
- 64.7k
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