Skip to main content
16 votes
Accepted

Present participles of the verb esse

Good question! In the beginning, way back in the far-flung times of Proto-Indo-European, the word for "it is" was something like *h₁ésti, and it had a fairly regular present participle, *h₁sónts. In ...
Draconis's user avatar
  • 69.3k
14 votes
Accepted

Why does "ῤάρος" have a smooth breathing?

I wasn't able to find out why this word, or name, has a smooth breathing. As you may have seen already, LSJ actually has separate entries for "Raros", a name, and "raros", the "embryo" word that TKR'...
Asteroides's user avatar
  • 30.1k
12 votes
Accepted

Why is it "dare" and not "dāre" when most first conjugation verbs spell like "amāre"?

The story, as often, has to do with Proto-Indo-European laryngeals. Both these verbs had a laryngeal as the last consonant of the root: *deh₃-, *steh₂-. All the forms in Latin are based on the zero ...
TKR's user avatar
  • 31.5k
12 votes

Why does "ῤάρος" have a smooth breathing?

To unpack the LSJ entry a little: the word is only found in grammatical works, and these differ as to its meaning: EM is the Etymologicum magnum, a 12th-century Byzantine lexicon/encyclopedia. This ...
TKR's user avatar
  • 31.5k
11 votes
Accepted

Medieval irregularities in the conjugation of salveo?

This is a different verb: not salveō, salvēre (2nd conjugation), but salvō, salvāre (1st conjugation), a late Latin word meaning 'to save.' salvo , āvi, ātum, 1, v. a. salvus, I. to save (late ...
cnread's user avatar
  • 20.8k
10 votes
Accepted

Imperatives of derivatives of facere, dicere and ducere

To supplement Tom Cotton's answer— There's one other verb which similarly shortens its imperative: ferō, ferre, tulī, lātus, imperative fer, ferte. Compounds always use the shortened/apocopated form (...
Draconis's user avatar
  • 69.3k
10 votes
Accepted

Why is intereo not declined like habeo?

Intereō is a compound, inter-eō; the second part is the famous irregular verb eō, īre, ivī/iī, itus. As such, it conjugates like eō does: inter-eō, inter-īs, inter-it, etc. As for why eō acts like ...
Draconis's user avatar
  • 69.3k
9 votes
Accepted

Are there any instances of long oblique cases of Iuppiter?

Varro mentions the possibility: De Lingua Latina 9.75.4ff. obliquos non habere ut in hoc Diespiter Diespitri Diespitrem, Maspiter Maspitri Maspitrem. ad haec respondeo et priora habere nominandi ...
cmw's user avatar
  • 58.2k
8 votes
Accepted

What is the imperative of velle?

There is no imperative of velle in Latin. It's possible that it used to be vel, but that would have been especially archaic. From Lewis and Short: old imperative of volo properly, "will, choose, ...
cmw's user avatar
  • 58.2k
7 votes
Accepted

Where does the infinitive 'fieri' come from?

I haven't been able to find any solid information on the etymology of the Latin infinitive, which is frustrating. I'm sure it's out there, so this will be only a partial answer (containing a decent ...
Draconis's user avatar
  • 69.3k
7 votes

Are there any instances of long oblique cases of Iuppiter?

I have searched the entire Loeb Classical Library, Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina and Keil's Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum. Believe me, this is quite representative. No, such forms are not attested ...
Alex B.'s user avatar
  • 11.8k
7 votes

Imperatives of derivatives of facere, dicere and ducere

Generally, verbs of mixed 3rd/4th conjugation and their compounds (inf. -ere, 1st. pres. sing. in -io) all follow the same pattern, which includes compounds of facio, but not facio itself — which ...
Tom Cotton's user avatar
  • 18.2k
7 votes

Why are Greek nouns in -ον, -ος transliterated in Latin as -um, -us?

I agree with the emphasis on morphology in the comments and in user786's answer. The Greek second-declension terminations -ον, -ος are etymologically and morphologically equivalent to the Latin second-...
Asteroides's user avatar
  • 30.1k
7 votes
Accepted

How do I create an agent noun from velle?

Two existing nouns with somewhat similar meaning are voluntarius and volo, volonis, both of which have meanings that can be glossed as “volunteer”. Nouns formed with the suffixes -arius and -o ...
Asteroides's user avatar
  • 30.1k
6 votes
Accepted

Are there other perfect imperatives than memento?

The perfect imperative is effectively extinct in Latin. I have never seen it with a perfect meaning, and in fact did not realize that mementō was based on a perfect stem until fdb pointed it out (...
Draconis's user avatar
  • 69.3k
6 votes
Accepted

Is memento(te) semantically a future imperative?

mementō is formed from the reduplicated perfect stem (IE *me-mn-), not from the present stem (IE *men-). Thus, morphologically it is a perfect imperative, not a future imperative; the latter is always ...
fdb's user avatar
  • 18k
6 votes

Imperatives of derivatives of facere, dicere and ducere

I don't have enough reputation to add a comment, but I wanted to point out that at least tābefac is attested, in the Vulgate no less: da illis formidinem et tabefac audaciam virtutis eorum et ...
Alan Thomas's user avatar
6 votes

Imperatives of derivatives of facere, dicere and ducere

As Weiss 2009/2011 mentions, word-final –e is “normally retained” (p. 147; emphasis mine – Alex B.). That being said, there are some few cases when word-final –e was lost (or apocopated). In your ...
Alex B.'s user avatar
  • 11.8k
6 votes

3rd Principal Part of *refero*

As @cnread's comment indicates, the geminate t of rettuli is thought to be a remnant of Indo-European perfect reduplication. The Proto-Indo-European perfect tense was formed with reduplication of the ...
TKR's user avatar
  • 31.5k
6 votes

Present participles of the verb esse

In medieval Latin there were neologisms such as ens. The link also says that the original form was sons with the classical meaning "guilty".
Vladimir F Героям слава's user avatar
6 votes
Accepted

Parallel examples of the change of Apothēca to boutique?

Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langue française (1914, p. 256) gives the following additional examples (among others) for French: Apulia > Pouille, Aquitania > Guyenne hemicrania > ...
TKR's user avatar
  • 31.5k
5 votes

Medieval irregularities in the conjugation of salveo?

To answer the other part of your question: salvas is of course 2nd (not 3rd) person singular, addressing God.
fdb's user avatar
  • 18k
5 votes
Accepted

Graciliscenda - Quid significat?

First, the original English version reads: He had made up a little hum that very morning, as he was doing his Stoutness Exercises in front of the glass. Based on this, exercitia graciliscenda ...
Joonas Ilmavirta's user avatar
5 votes
Accepted

Where does quire come from?

The etymology I've heard, though I can provide no sources on it, is that it started with the idiom neque it "he doesn't go yet" = "he cannot" (compare French ne pas "not a step" used to negate verbs). ...
Draconis's user avatar
  • 69.3k
5 votes
Accepted

When/whether to use "ineō" instead of "eō"

All three are fine! While there might be a slight difference in nuance, I would say that you can freely use any of them that feels best in that situation. There just turns out to be many ways to ...
Joonas Ilmavirta's user avatar
4 votes

Active verbs with passive meanings

I think the notion of "passive meaning" is quite elusive. Nevertheless, if neuter nouns can be the subject of intransitive verbs (like quid si nunc caelum ruat), which makes them, in my ...
d_e's user avatar
  • 11.8k
4 votes

What is the proper parsing of "macte virtute"?

hi everybody! The question is very controversial, truly. But there are some elements on which we can construct an answer. Firts I would like to start with a quote of the french author Chateaubriand, ...
Umberto Verdura's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Does 'fiebam' contain the same root twice?

It seems so. According to Hriberšek, the imperfect and future were most likely periphrastic constructions, with forms of *fu(i)- following the main verb. He cites Sihler 1995 comparing this to the ...
Draconis's user avatar
  • 69.3k
4 votes
Accepted

What is the uncontracted form of "κεῖμαι"? (Greek)

The verb κεῖμαι isn't a contract verb like θεάομαι or ἡγέομαι (or a 'regular' verb like λύω); it's an athematic verb like τίθημι, δίδωμι, or ἵημι, but deponent. So, the circumflex isn't showing ...
cnread's user avatar
  • 20.8k
4 votes
Accepted

Understanding vowel quantity in fieri

The paradigm of fio is quite unusual - see its present indicative partial paradigm (fīmus and fītis are pretty much regular; from my undergrad textbook, Sobolevskii 1948): Weiss writes that "In ...
Alex B.'s user avatar
  • 11.8k

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible