1.2 Latin Verbs Inside English — Epoché
What you will be able to do Name the Latin verb behind each of the endings -ceive, -duce, -fer, -mit, -scribe, -spect, -tain, -vert . Explain why one Latin verb gave English both receive and capture . Recognise the four-part shape in which Latin verbs are listed, and say which part each English word came from. Use a prefix plus a root to work out the meaning of an English word you have not thought about before. Read sentences like Veritas non est. [18] — Truth doesn't exist. — without looking anything up. Prerequisites : 1.1 — counting what you already own. The last lesson did nouns, where the borrowing is one word at a time. Verbs are better, because a verb arrives in English as a root plus a prefix , and the prefixes recombine. Eight roots and ten prefixes make eighty words, and English has taken most of them. Learn the eight roots and you have not eight words but a kit. What you already know Eight verbs. For each one, the second column gives the Latin dictionary form as a dictionary prints it, and the third gives English words built on it. Read straight down and notice how little help you need. English ending Latin verb English words -ceive capiō, capere, cēpī, captum — take, seize receive, deceive, conceive, perceive -duce dūcō, dūcere, dūxī, ductum — lead, draw produce, reduce, induce, conduct -fer ferō, ferre, tulī, lātum — carry, bear transfer, refer, confer, infer, offer -mit mittō, mittere, mīsī, missum — send, let go transmit, permit, submit, omit, admit -scribe scrībō, scrībere, scrīpsī, scrīptum — write describe, prescribe, subscribe, inscribe -spect speciō, specere, spexī, spectum — look at inspect, respect, suspect, prospect -tain teneō, tenēre, tenuī, tentum — hold retain, contain, obtain, sustain, detain -vert vertō, vertere, vertī, versum — turn convert, invert, divert, revert, subvert Forty English words from eight Latin verbs, and you have not had to be told a single meaning. But look more carefully at the first column. -ceive does not look much like capiō , and -tain does not look much like teneō . Those two forms passed through French; the ones that came straight from Latin look different again, and that is the subject of the second half of this lesson. The rule Latin verbs are listed in four parts , and the four parts are not decoration — they are the four stems from which everything else is built. Take scrībō : Part Form What it gives you 1st person singular present scrībō I write — the headword in a dictionary Infinitive scrībere to write — and the conjugation class 1st person singular perfect scrīpsī I wrote — the whole past system Participle scrīptum written — and the passive, and the future Now the rule that makes English useful to you: English took words from all four parts, and the fourth is the most productive. Latin part English words from it scrībere (present stem) describe, prescribe, scribe scrīptum (participle) script, scripture, description, prescription, manuscript mittere (present stem) transmit, permit, submit missum (participle) mission, missile, permission, submission, dismiss dūcere (present stem) produce, reduce, induce ductum (participle) product, conduct, aqueduct, abduction So an English pair like transmit / transmission is not two unrelated words with a shared prefix: it is the present stem and the participle stem of one Latin verb, borrowed separately. Once you see that, the fourth part stops being a thing to memorise and becomes the thing that explains your own vocabulary. And it works forwards too: if you know vertō, vertere, vertī, versum , then convert and conversion , invert and inversion , divert and diversion are all one fact. One verb, two arrivals capiō is the clearest case, and it is worth going through slowly because the pattern repeats across dozens of verbs. Route What happened to the vowel English words Through French -cip- softened to -ceiv- receive, deceive, conceive, perceive Straight from Latin, present stem kept -cip- recipient, principal, participate, anticipate Straight from Latin, participle kept -capt- / -cept- capture, captive, receipt, concept, deception So receive , recipient and receipt are three English words from the same Latin verb with the same prefix, differing only in which century and which route they took. That explains a spelling that otherwise looks perverse: receipt has a silent p because the Latin participle receptum has a real one, and an early modern editor put it back. The same triple happens with teneō : retain through French, tenacious and tenant from the present stem, retention and content from the participle. And with ferō , which is stranger still, because its perfect and participle come from an entirely different root — tulī, lātum — which is why English has both refer and relate , both confer and collate , from what Latin treats as one verb. Verbs that behave like this are called suppletive, and English has one of its own: go and went . Read it aloud Say the Latin. The familiar spellings will pull at you; hold the rules of the Sounds volume. Latin Stress What to watch capere CA-pe-re penult light, so the stress retreats; hard c dūcere DŪ-ce-re hard c : DOO-keh-reh , not DOO-seh-reh scrībere SCRĪ-be-re the cluster scr at the front, as in English vertere VER-te-re v as w : WER-teh-reh tenēre te-NĒ-re penult long, so the stress stays there mittere MIT-te-re the doubled t is genuinely held The pair tenēre and vertere is worth repeating together. Both are four letters plus -re ; the stress lands in different places purely because of the macron. That is the whole payload of lesson 0.5 turning up in real work, and from the Forms volume onward it will also tell you which conjugation a verb belongs to before you know anything else about it. New words The eight verbs, in the four-part form. Learn all four parts of each: they are what the dictionary gives you and what the English cognates come from. Word (dictionary form) Meaning Note capiō la take, seize, capture; understand Part of speech verb, 3rd co