Wednesday, May 1, 2024

09.04.24: more on ordinal numbers [1]; adjectives in -ius / -ī

The text from 1631 made use of ordinal numbers.

The ordinal numbers 1st – 10th were already covered in previous posts.

image #1: ordinal numbers 1st – 10th

Some English derivations from ordinal numbers:

[1] prīmus: primary school i.e. the first school which a child attends.

[2] secundus: English borrows ‘second’ from Old French, the word derived from Latin e.g. secondaryeducation

Other Gmc languages use an ordinal from ‘two’: (Gm: zweite; Du: tweede)

Note: secundus has an alternative meaning of “favourable”: ventus secundus (a favourable wind)

[3] tertius: tertiary education e.g. university, the third level after primary and secondary

[4] quārtus: quarter

[5] quīntus: see image #2

[6] nōnus: noon is derived from a Germanic borrowing of Latin nōna hōra (the 9thhour), originally 3pm; Old Engl: nōn > Mid. Engl: noen, none, non

[7] octāvus: octavo is a size of paper made by folding the original sheet three times to produce eight leaves

[8] decimus: decimate originally meant the killing of 1/10 of a group as a military punishment in the Roman army

Image #3: ordinal numbers function as adjectives, and they all decline like 1st/ 2nd declension adjectives.

Image #4: alteris also a 1st / 2nd declension adjective ending in -er (like miser, -a, -um) but belongs to a small group of adjectives which have a different singular ending in the [1] masculine and neuter genitive (-ius) and [2] masculine and neuter dative (-ī). The other adjectives which take the same endings are:

alius, -a, -ud: another

alter, -a, -um: the other

ūllus, -a, -um: any

nūllus, -a, -um: none; no [in the sense of ‘not any’]

ūter, -a, -um: which [one]; which [of two]

neuter, -a, -um: neither

sōlus, -a, -um: alone

tōtus, -a, -um: whole; entire


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