29
votes
Accepted
Why "ex nihilo" instead of "e nihilo"?
That's actually not a rule. ab and ex can lose their consonant, but in fact it's far more common for them not to. Check out Lewis and Short's entries on them:
ex/e
ex always before vowels, and ...
cmw♦
- 50.7k
21
votes
Accepted
Can "ee" appear in Latin?
First, Galilaee sounds right.
See this question about the vocative of Gnaeus for details.
There are situations where one finds -ee- in Latin without the first e belonging to ae.
What I found is not ...
- 110k
16
votes
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The Latin word “Have” rather than “Ave” as a translation of the Greek word Χαῖρε?
It's an alternate form of ave; the L&S entry gives a couple of examples.
Presumably this form arose through hypercorrection: since h was generally not pronounced in popular speech, confusion ...
- 30.6k
15
votes
Latin ligature "qz"?
I would say that is a common abbreviation for "-que". Maybe you could find useful Cappelli's Dizionario di Abbreviature latine (a very detailed repertory of latin abbreviations). Take a look here.
...
- 2,886
14
votes
The Latin word “Have” rather than “Ave” as a translation of the Greek word Χαῖρε?
There is a longstanding view that the interjection ave is not the imperative of the verb aveo “to long for”, but is a loan from Punic ḥawe (tentative vocalisation), the imperative of the Semitic verb ...
- 17.5k
14
votes
Accepted
In Judith in Vulgate, why does Jerome transliterate the name "Arphaxad" with 'ph', but he transliterates "Holofernes" with an 'f'?
Both of these names are older than the Book of Judith, and come from different places.
Arphaxad is a transcription of Hebrew אַרְפַּכְשַׁד (ʔarpakšad), which appears in Genesis: a minor character who'...
- 64.6k
14
votes
Accepted
When did the silencing of 'h' start?
Before the late Republic
Already in Republican inscriptions we find people leaving off H's, as in Oratia for Horatia, or adding them where they don't belong, as in havet for avet. During this time, ...
- 64.6k
13
votes
Accepted
Why sequundus > secundus?
Secundus is regular, eqvus isn't
There's a sound change called the "Boukólos Rule", which started back in Proto-Indo-European. When labiovelar consonants (like /kʷ/ and /gʷ/) appeared next ...
- 64.6k
13
votes
Accepted
Conquering darkness by science
The macron (the bar over the a) is a modern reading aid, not a compulsory orthographic convention. It's not usually written outside of dictionaries, grammar, and text editions prepared specifically ...
- 8,638
12
votes
Accepted
Variations on the diminutive: -olus and -ulus
A word search confirms that -olus is used instead of -ulus after a vowel.
A Perseus search for words ending in -olus reveals (among a few false positives, like malevolus) that every diminutive form ...
- 38.5k
12
votes
Can "ee" appear in Latin?
The Vulgata is full with proper nouns having double -ee, specially as endings (e.g. Bersabee, Phacee, Osee). I imagine you are not particularly interested in these. Below are all the other words I ...
- 12.3k
12
votes
Accepted
When is "ei" a diphthong?
Very few Latin words contain "ei" as a diphthong. Some possible examples are deinde, dein, deinceps, rei, spei, and in fact, the pronoun ei (but not always).
The exact list of examples ...
- 26.5k
12
votes
Accepted
What is Plautus’s pun about frustum and frustrum?
I wrote a longer answer to this on the English language stack exchange, but in the migration process it got deleted.
Shorter answer: the quote is "ne sis frustra" from Plautus's play Miles Glorius ...
- 236
12
votes
Accepted
Æ ligature – the definitive answer
When it comes to Latin, 'æ' is the same as 'ae', at least when in the diphthong.
When the vowels are in different syllables, as in aer, then 'æ' is not used.
You could see this so that 'ae' is such a ...
- 110k
11
votes
Did the Romans confuse a long vowel with two short ones?
Well, there is some fairly simple evidence that a sequence of two identical short vowels could in some cases be treated as equivalent to a single long vowel, namely that the former can contract into ...
- 30.6k
11
votes
Accepted
Use of ß (“eszett”) in Latin text
The modern German roman-type ß was developed at the end of the 19th century as an analogue of the blackletter ß, which was a ligature of ſ and z (which is reflected in its name) that had slowly ...
- 1,184
11
votes
Accepted
Is there a word for a typo?
1. Mendum
Mendum corresponds exactly to this sense:
Gaffiot
mendum,¹⁴ ī, n., faute, erreur [dans un texte]mendum,¹⁴ ī, n., faute, erreur [dans un texte] : ; Att. 13, 23, 2
Lewis&Short
...
- 2,292
11
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 ...
- 30.6k
11
votes
Accepted
How can I translate a slogan "pain is temporary, glory eternal!" to Latin correctly?
A well-known Latin translation of a Greek aphorism is
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
Art is long, life is short.
If you use that as a model, you could do something very similar:
Dolor brevis, Gloria Longa
...
- 8,412
10
votes
Why was Z used in digraphs?
Note that the letter Z has been associated with affricate sounds like [ts] for a very long time.
Ancient use of "Z" for affricate sounds
Zeta in Classical Attic Greek is thought to have ...
- 26.5k
10
votes
Accepted
Variation in the spelling of word-final M
I'm afraid my answer is the boring one: free variation, based on the amount of space available.
The tilde originally arose purely as an abbreviation: instead of writing an n or m in line with the ...
- 64.6k
10
votes
Do Aeolic and Ancient Greek have other examples of τ/π (πέντε / πέμπε)?
This phenomenon isn't confined to the voiceless stops τ/π, but also involves their voiced and aspirated counterparts, δ/β and θ/φ. So there are pairs like Δελφοί / Βελφοί "Delphi", θήρ / φήρ "wild ...
- 30.6k
10
votes
In the "Pater Noster" prayer why is 'panem nostrum' sometimes "quotidianum" and other times "cotidianum"?
Quotidianum and cotidianum are simply two different ways to spell the same word. This word belongs to a group of words that can be spelled with either a QU or a C, which includes cum and quom.
These ...
- 4,408
10
votes
Accepted
Ancient Greek: how worried do I need to be about "long" and "short" accents?
I don't seem to recall seeing many of these "short" and "long" diacritics in Wiktionary. Are they actually Ancient Greek in origin (I mean, added by Aristophanes of Byzantium, or ...
- 64.6k
9
votes
Accepted
-NL- and -LL- in Classical Latin
Check out the Epigraphic Database Heidelberg. It thankfully allows you to search words, which will allow you to look at deeper results. From a cursory search, though it seems that conl- is earlier, ...
cmw♦
- 50.7k
9
votes
Accepted
Why was Z used in digraphs?
Archaic and Classical Latin
First of all, the letter Z has never been common in Archaic and Classical Latin, for a number of reasons, primarily because there was no such phoneme (see more on ...
- 11.6k
9
votes
In Judith in Vulgate, why does Jerome transliterate the name "Arphaxad" with 'ph', but he transliterates "Holofernes" with an 'f'?
One possible avenue is that Jerome is hearing a difference in the original Hebrew/Aramaic. In Hebrew, Arphaxad is spelled אַרְפַּכְשַׁד. The פַּ has a dagesh, which means that it is pronounced as a ...
cmw♦
- 50.7k
9
votes
Understanding the spelling deviation from the scripture in the title of a sundial nearby a Catholic church in Moscow
It's hard to tell for sure from the image, but couldn't that just be the stroke of an A, with the rest faded or somehow gone missing?
There is a word Umbri, but it has to do with the ancient people by ...
cmw♦
- 50.7k
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