10 Comments

  1. Hello! Thank you for all of this helpful information! Question: What are the four principal parts of the verb “administro”?
    Thank you again!

    1. Hi Nichole, administrō is a regular 1st conjugation verb, so the principal parts are administrō, administrāre, administrāvī, administrātus. I hope this helps!

  2. Can you speak to why the verb Timeo, timere, timui does not have a 4th principle part?

    1. Hi Erika, this is a great question. The 4th principal part is the perfect passive participle, and for whatever reason timeō does not have a perfect passive participle – or at least, the form does not survive in any Latin texts.

      Usually verbs lack a 4th principal part when they can’t be used in the passive voice at all. In the case of timeō, it DOES have some passive forms, just not in the perfect system. There is not a very satisfactory answer as to WHY – it’s simply a quirk of how this verb is used in Latin.

  3. Hi Livia
    The 4th principal part of a Latin verb is named by you and others as “the perfect participle passive”. Being as I have some lack of familiarity as yet with the fine points of English verb tenses, and my aged (1953) Latin textbook doesn’t use that description, I’m in a bit of a muddle. My difficulty is in trying to figure out in which tense to find “the perfect participle passive”. Is it in the Perfect Indicative (Perfect Tense) which represents an action as completed in present time, or as simple past, or is it in the Future Perfect Indicative (Future Perfect Tense) which represents an action as completed in some future time? I can’t yet make out all those haves and shall haves, etc.

    1. Hi Marian, good question. Participles are verbal adjectives and therefore they do not have a person or mood like standard conjugated verbs. This is why you will not find them listed in conjugation charts. They usually receive their own section in a textbook.

      The perfect participle passive belongs to the perfect tense, which means that it is the participial equivalent of the perfect indicative passive. E.g.

      Perfect indicative passive: puella laudāta est = “the girl has been praised”
      Perfect participle passive: puella laudāta rīdet = “the girl, having been praised, laughs”

      I hope that this helps to answer your question. I will add participles to my list of future posts!

      EDIT: I have now published a post dedicated to participles.

  4. Why are some 4th principal parts shown in brackets?

    1. Hi Kathy, I don’t think I have used any brackets in this post, so I am not quite sure what you are referring to. Sometimes textbooks will use parentheses or brackets to indicate that a 4th principal part is rarely used, but I would need to see the specific instance to be sure.

  5. Koke Saavedra says:

    Salve, Livia!
    I often see different four principal parts for verbs in the passive voice. Are they a second set of principal parts for the same verb? Do we need to memorize them to conjugate the passive forms of a verb?
    I love your Latin teachings. Thank you for your knowledge and time.
    Vale!
    Koke

    1. Salvē Koke! What do these different principal parts look like? The “standard” four principal parts are enough for you to be able to conjugate verbs in the passive voice; in fact, the fourth principal part is a passive form (the perfect passive participle). I actually talk about which principal part gives us which verb tenses and voices in my post on verb stems, if you want to take a look.

      Now back to the passive principal parts . . . do you mean that you have seen a regular verb like laudō with passive principal parts? I have never heard of this, but there are many teaching methods out there. Or perhaps you are seeing the principal parts of deponent verbs? These are verbs that have only passive forms, but only active meanings.

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