8.2 How to Use a Latin Dictionary — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read a dictionary headword and say what every part of it is for. Work backwards from a form in a text to the headword it is listed under. Know which dictionary to use, and which free ones exist. Say why the first sense in an entry is the one most likely to be wrong. Read sentences like Didymus heri ad me scripsit. [24] — Tom wrote to me yesterday. — without looking anything up. Prerequisites : lesson 8.1 — the layers, and with them the knowledge that a dictionary covers more than one language. This is the most practical lesson in the phase and the one that makes the rest of your reading possible. Everything you read from here on will have words in it that you do not know, and looking a Latin word up is harder than looking an English word up for one reason: the form in the text is almost never the form in the dictionary. Two skills, then. Reading an entry, which is the first half of this lesson, and getting to the entry in the first place, which is the second. A look at the original Here is what a dictionary actually prints. Ten headwords, all of them words from the vocabulary volume of this phase, in the form every Latin dictionary in every language uses. As printed Kind What the parts are Why they are there pater, patris, m. noun nominative, genitive, gender The genitive gives the stem and names the declension: -is is third. vīta, vītae, f. noun the same three -ae is first declension, and first declension is feminine unless the word names a man. corpus, corporis, n. noun the same three Third declension neuter. Without the genitive you could not guess the stem. manus, manūs, f. noun the same three Fourth declension — and feminine, which the ending does not suggest. bonus, bona, bonum adjective three nominative singulars Masculine, feminine, neuter. An adjective of this type is listed by its three endings, often abbreviated to bonus, -a, -um . omnis, omne adjective two nominative singulars A third-declension adjective, where the masculine and feminine share a form. Two endings, not three. amō, amāre, amāvī, amātum verb four principal parts Present, infinitive, perfect, supine. Every form in the language is built from one of these four. dīcō, dīcere, dīxī, dictum verb the same four Third conjugation: the infinitive ends in a short -ere , which is how you tell it from the second. loquor, loquī, locūtus sum verb (deponent) three parts, all passive A deponent, as 4.5 said. The dictionary warns you by giving passive forms and an active meaning. meminī, meminisse verb (defective) two parts, both perfect No present exists. The dictionary gives what there is and says defective . Three things are worth saying about this table as a whole. The parts are not a description, they are a generator. Every form of dīcō that exists in any Latin text is built from one of its four principal parts by a rule. The dictionary gives you four words and you get several hundred. This is why Latin dictionaries list what they list, and why learning a verb means learning four words rather than one. The abbreviations are constant across languages. m. , f. , n. for the genders; adj. , adv. , conj. , praep. for the parts of speech; dep. for a deponent. A German, Italian or Japanese Latin dictionary uses the same ones, because they are abbreviations of the Latin words. You can use a Latin dictionary in a language you do not read. The long marks are the dictionary's, not the Romans'. No Latin text prints them. They are in the entry because the dictionary is telling you how the word was pronounced and, more practically, because vowel length distinguishes forms that are otherwise identical — the nominative vīta from the ablative vītā , and the ōs that is a mouth from the os that is a bone. Terms Ten words that appear in the front matter of every dictionary and grammar. Term Meaning Notes lemma la the headword Note The form a word is listed under. For a Latin noun it is the nominative singular; for a verb, the first person singular present. principal parts the forms a dictionary gives Note Four for most verbs, three for a deponent, two for a noun or a defective verb. They are not decoration: every other form is derived from them. supine la the fourth principal part Note A verbal noun, given because the perfect passive participle and several other forms are built on its stem. declension la the pattern a noun follows Note Five of them, named by the genitive singular ending. See 4.2. conjugation la the pattern a verb follows Note Four of them, named by the vowel before the infinitive ending. deponent la passive in form, active in meaning Note About a hundred and fifty verbs. Only the dictionary tells you. defective la lacking some forms Note A handful of verbs have no present, or no perfect, or exist only in the third person. gloss la a short English equivalent Note Note: not a definition and not a translation. A gloss is a hook; the entry is the meaning. cognate la a word descended from the same ancestor Note English father and Latin pater are cognate. Neither is derived from the other. false friend a word that looks related and is not, or has moved Note See the last section. This course has measured how often it happens. Working backwards to the headword You are reading, and you meet locūtus . It is not in the dictionary. Here is the procedure, in the order to apply it. 1. Strip the ending and name it. What ending is it? -us on a word with a t before it is very often a perfect passive participle, which is built on the fourth principal part. So the headword will be a verb. 2. Ask which principal part you are looking at. There are only four, and each has its own characteristic shapes. A form with -t- or -s- before the ending is usually built on the third or fourth part; a form with the plain stem is built on the first. 3. Guess the first part and look it up. This is the step that takes practice, and there are rules of thumb: a perfect in -xī usually comes from a present in -gō or -cō ; one in -sī from -