Carpe Diem by Harry Mount

Author:Harry Mount
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781401389925
Publisher: HarperCollins

Now to deal properly with verbs. Deep breath time again. As I said, there are four conjugations of verbs. The way to sum up a verb is in its so-called principal parts, that is, the four familiar forms of each verb.

So, with amo, the principal parts are: amo, amare, amavi, amatum—“I love,” “to love,” “I have loved,” and the so-called supine.

Thus in any Latin dictionary, the principal parts of a verb are laid out next to its definition, to show the four basic forms that you’ll come across: i.e., facio, facere, feci, factum—“I do/make.”

The first principal part is the most simple form of the verb, the first person (that is, “I…”) singular present. This always ends in -o: exsudo—“I sweat/exude”; turpo—“I make ugly/defile.”

Incidentally, a good way to remember the spelling of the adjective “principal” (as opposed to the noun, “principle”) is the fact that the Latin adjective meaning “leading,” from princeps, -ipis m.—prince, is principalis, -e. (By the way, when I list only two genders, like here with principalis, -e, that’s because it goes the same in both the masculine and the feminine.)

The second principal part is the infinitive (i.e., “to stroke,” “to fiddle,” etc.). This always ends with -re, but the letter before the -re changes according to the conjugation.

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