33
votes
How to write 13 in Roman Numerals (Unicode)?
In most cases, you should write 13 as XIII and not use any of the precomposed numbers, because the precomposed numbers up to 12 in the Unicode standard are intended for a small set of special use ...
32
votes
Accepted
What was the symbol used for 'one thousand' in Ancient Rome?
The shortest answer is, often they didn't use anything! Roman numerals weren't frequently used for numbers greater than a thousand; accountants doing math with big numbers would have alternate systems ...
- 65.1k
21
votes
What is the word for number "0"?
Classical Latin does not have a word for, or a concept of, “zero”. Fibonacci in about 1200 used the term zephirum, a transcription of Arabic ṣifr “empty”, then “zero” as a calque on Sanskrit śūnya “...
- 17.6k
18
votes
Does it make sense to display a decimal number such as 12.34 as Roman numerals? If not, how else?
In general, if you're going for authentic Roman numerals, you'd have to convert the decimal portion into one of the fractions that a Roman would use – or a sum of those fractions. Obviously, this is ...
- 19.3k
15
votes
Accepted
Why was ante tribus translated as "fifteen years ago"?
Lustrum has several meanings, but that which applies here is the period of five years which elapsed from census to census. The phrase is actually lustris ante tribus, or 'three lustra ago'.
A good ...
- 18k
14
votes
Accepted
How do I specify how many "litterae" or "castra" there are?
You should use a distributive. Cicero, ad Atticum, 5. 3:
ibi mihi tuae litterae binae redditae sunt tertio abs te die
This works for all such plural nouns, but you should take care over the case ...
- 18k
14
votes
Accepted
What does the "Roman" numeral Ɔ represent?
The most likely reading (which seems consistent with the look of the piece of the book shown and the dates found for other books published by Caspar Beller by a quick Google search) is that the C is ...
- 3,004
14
votes
Is there a Latin word for 225th anniversary?
"Bicentennial" is not actually Latin; it's just English. It doesn't even come from a Latin word. In particular, bicentennial is an Americanism, and the more common word in England was (is ...
cmw♦
- 52.2k
13
votes
Accepted
Are "sex" and "sexus" etymologically related?
The gist of Au101's answer is confirmed by de Vaan's Etymological Dictionary. First, regarding sex, in Proto-Italic and Proto-Indo-European, he gives:
PIt. *seks 'six', *seks-to- 'sixth'
PIE *(s)...
- 11.3k
12
votes
Which Roman Numerals were used to express extremely large numbers in Classical Latin?
Well, there's the story from chapter five of Suetonius' life of Galba about how Tiberius cheated Galba out of his inheritance:
Observavit ante omnis Liviam Augustam, cujus et vivae gratia plurimum ...
- 16.4k
12
votes
How to write 13 in Roman Numerals (Unicode)?
Sebastian Koppehel has already supplied a very good answer (the current version of the Unicode standard is 15.0.0 and he linked to version 6.0.0 but the specs are unchanged in this respect). However, ...
- 3,246
12
votes
What is the word for number "0"?
Just an addendum, but you can translate "zero" as nullus, -a, -um when it's used in sentences like, "I have zero pigs." The Romans would say: nullos porcos habeo.
But in English, ...
cmw♦
- 52.2k
11
votes
Accepted
Do Roman numerals stand for something?
My old Latin teacher jokingly taught that it's all based on hands. I for a single finger; V for the shape of the space between the thumb and the fingers when a palm is put up; and X for the shape of ...
cmw♦
- 52.2k
11
votes
Are "sex" and "sexus" etymologically related?
No, I don't think so, and for this I can actually rely on etymonline which is a fine resource, even if linguistics students are discouraged from using it for their homework.
The entry for the English ...
- 323
10
votes
Is there an adjective for "of eight years, eight years old"?
The word is octennis. You can say puer octennis – but it's an extremely unusual word and not classical.
More common ways to express the idea are:
puer octo annos natus – an eight year old boy
puer ...
9
votes
Accepted
How did the Romans pronounce roman numerals?
As Eleshar pointed out in a comment, the Roman numeral system is more flexible than many sources let you believe.
However, the rigid system usually taught in schools actually does have a kind of ...
- 111k
9
votes
Accepted
What is the correct Latin prefix for 'two-and-a-half-times'?
There is a very common word in Latin that literally means "two and a half": sestertium, -i. This comes from semis + tertius, the idea being (I suppose) that it is "half-way to three [from two]."
This ...
- 39.5k
9
votes
Accepted
Is unius an irregular genitive?
Many pronouns have this kind of genitive form
Genitives in -ius exist for a fairly small number of Latin words. I'm not sure of the exact amount.
I would say that the stems that take this kind of ...
- 27.3k
9
votes
What is the word for number "0"?
https://www.translate.com/english-latin says it is nulla. Is it correct?
No, it isn't. Nulla is classical Latin for nothing. It's one thing that the Romans could've used instead of the number zero ...
- 776
8
votes
Accepted
An error message in Latin for my programming language
I suggest numerus pravus for 'incorrect' and numerus nimius for 'too large'.
- 18k
8
votes
Accepted
Does Latin have any words for specific numbers apart from the numbers themselves (akin to the English "dozen", for example)
I can think of at least these two:
decuria: A group of ten things or people
centuria: A group of a hundred people (not things), especially a military unit of 100, later 60 men
7
votes
Accepted
Comparing decem and -decim
It might be a type of metathesis: *undecem > *undicem > undecim. This is apparently irregular, but metathesis often is. I don't know for sure, but I was able to find a source that suggests this, ...
- 27.3k
7
votes
1 to at least 200 Latin list cardinal numbers
For numbers between 100 and 1000 you can just take the components out of the Wikipedia table you found.
ascendit Simon Petrus et traxit rete in terram plenum magnis piscibus centum quinquaginta ...
- 558
7
votes
1 to at least 200 Latin list cardinal numbers
Here is a nice list of Latin cardinal, ordinal, adverbial and distributive numerals going from 1 to 1,000,000 (continuously to 1,000, then with gaps):
https://www.arndt-bruenner.de/mathe/scripts/...
7
votes
Accepted
Correct pronunciation of full Latin dates
There is probably no fixed standard, and I am not sure there is any authority that might set one. I believe many Latin speakers do not leave out the anno.
However, when Pope Benedict XVI announced his ...
7
votes
Accepted
How big is "duas partes decimarum"?
As Allen & Greenough 135e explains,
When the denominator is one greater than the numerator, only the
numerator is given.
duae partēs two-thirds
trēs partēs three-fourths, etc.
So, duas partes ...
- 6,339
7
votes
Accepted
How do you use a numeral as a genitive substantive?
One way to express "the nine" is to use one of the number-based nouns borrowed from Greek:
mŏnăs
dy̆ăs
trĭăs
tĕtrăs
(L&S marks the first vowel long, probably due to the long ...
- 111k
7
votes
Accepted
Is there an adjective for "of eight years, eight years old"?
Just to supplement Sebastian's answer, octoni is the distributive adjective for octo and it means "eight times" or "eight at a time." It is not the same type of word as septuennis. ...
cmw♦
- 52.2k
6
votes
How were fractions written and pronounced?
Fractions were written, as you might expect, using Roman numerals. This wasn't particularly elegant for anything more complex than adding and subtracting, but it worked great for commerce, and that ...
- 65.1k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible