16 Comments

  1. Cassandra Acly says:

    Just re-studying Latin, which was I enjoyed in high school many years ago. Enjoying your site. I am also interested in mythology, so I love that you are as well.

    1. Hi Cassandra, I am so glad to hear you are enjoying my site! Mythology is so much fun, and hopefully you will be able to read myths in Latin soon 🙂

  2. Mike Kearney says:

    This is an interesting site. Thank you. Long ago I majored in Latin. In high school and college I was taught to decipher Latin, not really read it. (reading and deciphering are different mental processes) But in recent years, I have been teaching myself to read Latin. The resources of the internet, such as your site, have made this hobby of mine possible.

    1. Hi Mike, I am so happy to hear that my site has been helpful! Yes, *reading* Latin is so different than deciphering it, but unfortunately – due to the way Latin is traditionally taught -many students never get past the deciphering. One of my goals is to encourage a more holistic and natural approach to reading Latin.

  3. Anonymous says:

    I really enjoyed this. I take latin right now as a high schooler and We review phrases like this.

    1. I’m so glad you enjoyed the post! 🙂

  4. Hi, Livia. The word CIRCA came up as a Wordle solution (yesterday, 4/28/23, so this is not a spoiler). That caused me to ponder whether “circa” is really an English word, as opposed to Latin. Some googling led me to your site. I posted an extract to an on-line Wordle group I participate in, with credit and a link to your site, of course. Thanks for your help.

    I speak three Latin-based languages, French, Spanish, and Italian (some better than others), but I’ve never studied Latin. If you’re not already familiar with it, I’m sure you’d love the book “From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts”, by Peter Boyd-Bowman. It traces the rather regular changes that occurred in Vulgar Latin as it was transformed into French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese (as is often the case, poor Romanian got left out).

    1. Hi Lawrence, thanks for stopping by! I am glad I was able to help with your question about “circa.” The Wordle is so much fun, as is the NYT mini crossword puzzle (which occasionally has Latin-related words as well!).

      Ooh, thank you for the book recommendation. I have never read it and I will add it to my list. I speak Spanish fluently and I have basic knowledge of French and Italian, so I am always interested in Latin’s development into the modern Romance languages.

  5. Mikael Bohon says:

    Do you have this list in PDF format for download? Hoping to use the phrases as a kind of weekly latin exordium for my reluctant 9th grade latin student.

    1. Hi Mikael, unfortunately I don’t have the list in PDF format at the moment. But perhaps you could either bookmark the page or use the “print to PDF” function? I hope the phrases help increase your student’s enthusiasm for Latin!

  6. I’m not sure if this one fits, but my dermatologist uses “in situ”…
    Thanks for the list!

    1. In situ is a fantastic example – thank you, Mike!

      The literal meaning is “in the place” or “on the spot”. Dermatology is one context in which it is used; it’s also a very important term in archaeology. If you take a photo of an object in situ, that means that you photograph it in its exact find spot (wherever it came out of the ground during excavation).

      Edit: I have added it to the list!

  7. RALPH M PRITCHETT says:

    I was puzzled by the ending of verbatim. Then I saw it was medieval.

    1. Hi Ralph, it’s an odd ending with a long history. But at a certain point it became possible to add –tim to nouns to form adverbs, and that’s what happened with verbātim. Examples from Classical Latin are guttātim (“drop by drop”), ostiātim (“from door to door”), generātim (“by kinds”), and tribūtim (“tribe by tribe”).

  8. RALPH M PRITCHETT says:

    Since you have de facto, you might want to add de jure.

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