18
di- is Greek and bi- is Latin
The Proto-Indo-European root for "two" is reconstructed as *dw-. The remnants of this w can be seen in English "two", Russian dva, Ancient Greek δύο, and many other languages, as well as Latin duo, "two".
Old Latin had many words starting with dv- (where v was pronounced as English "w"). But at some point before Classical ...
12
Your are confused; bi- is Latin and di- is Greek. There is no real difference in meaning between them, but in usage bi- is used with Latin constructions like bisexual and di- with Greek constructions like diglossia. bi- is not a Greek prefix.
(As an aside, I should mention that both Latin bi- and Greek δι‐ have a common origin in a reconstructed ancestor *...
11
For what I know, the double prefixation beginning with per- is the most productive (I quote only a few examples):
perincertus
[per+ in + certus] (Sall. hist. 4,1,2 [Gell. 18,4,4]: perincertum stolidior an vanior);
perindignus
[per + in + dignus] (Suet. Tib. 50, 2: tulit etiam perindigne actum in senatu);
perincommodus
[per + in + commodus] (Liv....
10
As typically with this kind of thing, it's good to look at the different meanings present already in classical Latin.
Lewis and Short mention "collection, gathering" as a meaning of conceptus.
And that makes sense: capere means taking or capturing, con- adds togetherness.
Taking things together is gathering.
But that is not the only meaning.
It is not ...
9
What is the difference in meaning or nuance between 'premō' and 'imprimō' in the sense of 'I press'?
Officially, imprimo means I mark/stamp (hence English impression), where premo just means I press.
The nuances of Latin prefixes have long fascinated me, and it took me forever to realize that they’re basically equivalent to English verbs that contain prepositions. So here it‘s a case of to press vs. to press in. Other examples are:
rideo = I laugh; ...
9
The closest Latin prefix I can think of is contra-.
I'm not sure if it as exact synonym of anti-, but certainly close enough for many purposes; both contra- and anti- mean "against".
The English prefix "counter-" appears to be a descendant of this Latin prefix.
It seems that in front of words related to vertere, it is often contro- instead of contra-.
The ...
9
Joonas's answer is entirely correct, but just to add onto it a bit:
The way I learned it, prōd is an archaic form of prō. You'll also sometimes see pōr as in pōrrigō, pōlluō, etc: these three all came from different forms of the same PIE root.
In the end, prō was the one that won out, and so that's the only one you'll see used as a preposition. But all ...
9
It is worth pointing out that native speakers of Latin were well aware of the ambiguity referred to by Joonas in his question (directional/locative prefix IN- vs. negative prefix IN-). For example, consider the ambiguity of invocatus ('called upon' and 'not called upon') that is comically exploited by Plautus in the following text (Pl. Capt. 1, 69ff.):
...
8
It's usual to attribute it to a point in time when Latin had a strong stress accent on the first syllable, so interior vowels in open syllables weakened to i or (depending on the environment) u. So, we posit something like: *in+'habere -> *'inhabere -> 'inhibere -> inhi'bere.
(IPA: [ɪn+ˈhɑbeːrɛ] -> [ˈɪnhɑbeːrɛ] -> [ˈɪnhɪbeːrɛ] -> [ɪnhɪˈbeːrɛ])
(As a side ...
8
It's Late Latin. From the OED:
Originally this governed a following word in the genitive, but in late Latin the tendency to use the phrase as a compound noun appears in vicequæstor (equivalent to prōquæstor of analogous origin). In medieval Latin such formations became common, as vicecomes, -consul, -decanus, -dominus, -princeps, -rector, -rex, etc.
As ...
7
Just as we have both intrā and intrō, citrā/citrō, ultrā/ultrō, there used to be a form contrō, which has only survived in this word. De Vaan adduces an Oscan form contrud. Historically, the -ō forms are masc./neut. ablatives, the -ā forms are fem. ablatives.
7
There are differences between the two words.
Lewis and Short give a detailed account of both prae and ante.
There are situations where they are interchangeable, but they are not synonymous everywhere.
For details, see the two dictionary entries.
Here are some points to highlight the difference:
Both ante and prae mean "before" in a spatial sense, but ante ...
7
Before vowels the prefix pro- becomes prod-.
In addition to prodigere, we have prodire, prodesse, and maybe others that I forget now.
Where the -d- comes from is another question, but for practical purposes of learning Latin one can just learn the prevocalic version of the prefix.
It is very common that a short a in a short first syllable of a verb becomes ...
7
This is what the OED has to say on the subject:
[On the analogy of forms of expression like ex exsule consul, ‘(that
has become) a consul from an exile’, the phrases ex consule, ex
magistro equitum, etc. were in the Latin of the empire added as titles
to the names of men who had filled the offices of consul, master of
the horse, etc. At a later ...
6
I went through all Latin consonants.
All consonants seem to prefer only one of e- and ex-.
I have only listed one example per consonant.
There are no (or only few and rare) verbs starting with X or Z.
The prefix e-:
B: (e)bibere
D: (e)ducere
G1: (e)gerere
I2: (e)iurare, eicere < iacere
L: (e)loqui
M3: (e)mergere
N: (e)numerare
R4: (e)rumpere
V5: (e)...
6
This comes down to editorial practice and whether it's being used as a proper name or not.
So in Caesar's Gallic War, Seel capitalized both Cisalpina and Gallia, because it's Cisalpina Gallia, one place (my edition by Du Pontet has the same):
uos ex Cisalpina Gallia consulis sacramento rogasset
However, Rossbach left the C uncapitalized in his edition ...
6
I think it's partly common sense. For example, I can't imagine them going with indefinite adjectives, e.g. *peraliqui, for which Phi database gives zero results. But would such a word even mean? How do you intensify "any"? It's nonsense.
However, any positive adjective which has a comparative or superlative form can take it no problem. It can also be placed ...
6
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 usage is antiquated and almost entirely replaced by the current meaning of a "serterce," which according to L&S is:
a small silver coin, originally ...
6
Classical Latin does of course have anti- in Greek loanwords (e.g. antithesis), but does not seem to use it in combination with Latin words.
6
The negative prefix typically attaches to an adjective, while the prepositional prefix typically attaches to a verb. The distribution is complicated by the existence of adjectives derived from verbs (or at least, participle forms that look very similar to adjectives) and nouns derived from adjectives or from verbs. But if you're looking at a finite verb form ...
6
I'm inclined to agree that participles are a likely source, as you suggest.
An example that springs to mind is innatus. As the perfect participle of innascor it means 'having been born in', etc. A little surprisingly, as that of innato it would mean something like 'having been floated upon' (perhaps, for instance, hydrargyrum innatum est ferro, though I can'...
5
If the original question is about English, it's in the wrong stack. However, if you're looking for a Latin form, I'd like to offer another alternative: taking the noun, making it into an adjective with -osus, and then making that superlative.
Let's take, for example, take the word populus, "people." To describe a place as being "full of people," we have the ...
5
I'll second what TKR said. However, you should keep in mind the pun in the word. That prefix u- is supposed to sound like eu, giving us the homophone eutopia, or "good place." In the earliest editions of Utopia, More included the following notice:
Vtopia priscis dicta, ob infrequentiam,
Nunc ciuitatis aemula Platonicae,
Fortasse uictrix, (nam quod ...
5
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 (adfer/adferte, offer/offerte etc), with *adfere / *adferete, *offere / *offerete etc entirely absent from the PHI corpus.
So these two seem relatively certain:...
5
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 means that effice, etc. are the correct forms. Fac is a peculiarity.
Unlike those of facio, the compounds of dico and duco mainly follow the pattern of the simple ...
5
There is a (rare) preposition sēd, sē “without” with the ablative (as in Old Latin sed fraude), and (more commonly) a prefix sē- “without, apart from” (as in securus etc.), and also the conjunction sed “but”. The commonly accepted theory is that these derive from some case form (ablative?) of the reflexive pronoun IE *swe-, as in Latin se, suus. The semantic ...
5
I don't think it's possible to distinguish in meaning "in" from PIE *en and in- meaning "not" from PIE *n̥ from pronunciation alone. It's well known that the /i/ in in- lengthens when followed by certain consonsant combinations such as "ns" and "nf", but as far as I know, that is purely phonetically determined and has nothing to do with the ancestral ...
5
No, com- isn't causative in Latin. (I'm going to assume you're talking about Latin compōnō, even though the question only mentions the French and English descendants.)
The original meaning of compōnō was exactly what you'd expect from com- + pōnō—that is, "to put things (pōnō) together (com-)". This meaning is still used in English nowadays: when someone ...
5
The short answer would be no. Nōmen is a well-known example of a word that did not historically start with a velar consonant but that has a velar in some related prefixed words: agnōmen, cognōmen, ignōminia (but not in praenōmen or prōnōmen). This is thought to be the result of analogy.
There seem to be certain words in Latin which start with an ...
5
The example that comes most immediately to my mind is invisus.
As the perfect passive participle of the verb invideo, it means 'looked at askance' (i.e., looked upon, but in a bad way), and it's regularly used, by extension, as an adjective meaning 'hateful' or 'unpopular.' Use of this adjective/participle is very common.
As the negative of perfect passive ...
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