Episode Details

My links:

My patreon: ⁠patreon.com/user?u=103280827⁠

TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@mrconnerly?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc⁠

Email: ⁠rhetoricrevolution@gmail.com⁠

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connerlyliam/

Podcast | Latin in Layman’s - A Rhetoric Revolution https://open.spotify.com/show/0EjiYFx1K4lwfykjf5jApM?si=b871da6367d74d92

There are two important rules to remember here: 

• (1) Third-declension adjectives are i-stem. That means their ablative singulars will end –i, their genitive plurals will end -ium, and neuter nominative and accusative plurals will end -ia. 

• (2) Third-declension adjectives can be one-, two-, or three-termination. 

Just like some Latin nouns, some Latin adjectives are third-declension. That is, they have third-declension endings: *, -is, -i, -em, -e, and so on. But unlike third-declension nouns, third-declension adjectives are all i-stem. They have a genitive plural ending -ium, a neuter nominative and accusative plural ending -ia, and an ablative singular ending in all genders, -i. 

Here’s an example of a third-declension adjective: brevis, breve, meaning “short.” 

        M/F I-Stem               Neuter I-Stem

brevis breves breve brevia

brevis brevium    → brevis       brevium

brevi brevibus brevi brevibus

brevem breves/-is breve brevia

breve brevibus brevi brevibus

• Some third declension adjectives have two nominative singular forms, for instance, fortis, forte. Fortis is the masculine and feminine form; forte is the neuter. This is called a two-termination adjective.  

• Other third-declension adjectives, especially those which have -r at the end of their base, have three nominative singular forms, such as acer, acris, acre. These are called three-termination adjectives. 

For any adjectives which are two- or three-termination, all you do is drop the –is from the nominative singular feminine form and you have the base. 

1. Take, for example, the two-termination adjective fortis, forte. Fortis is the nominative singular feminine form; drop the –is and you can see that the base is fort-. 

2. For a three-termination adjective, do the same. So, for acer, acris, acre: the nominative singular feminine form is acris; drop the –is, and you can see that the base is acr-. 

3. For one-termination adjectives, as we just noted, the genitive singular is required. So, for instance, the base of potens is potent-, which you get when you drop the –is ending from the genitive singular form. 

Let’s do an exercise where you get to practice matching third-declension adjectives with first/second-declension nouns, or nouns of any declension as a matter of fact.

• First, we’ll determine the decle