18.04.24: back to the weather; related nouns and adjectives to describe weather

Sometimes, when dealing with a topic which lends itself to speaking in Latin, it can be troublesome to find exactly how it was expressed by the Ancient Romans. Luckily, Pliny and Cicero wrote about it!

[1] Caelum est hieme frīgidum et gelidum (Pliny) ¦ In winter the weather is cold and frosty

Caelum [neuter] frīgidum [neuter] est. It’s cold weather. The weather is cold.

Caelum est gelidum. The weather’s frosty.

[2] Erat hiems summa, tempestās … perfrīgida, imber maximus (Cicero) ¦ It was the depth of winter; the weather … (was) bitterly cold; heavy rain was falling …

Tempestās [feminine] perfrīgida [feminine] est. It’s bitterly cold weather. The weather is bitter cold.

So, with either caelum [neuter] or tempestās [feminine] we can use a whole range of adjectives to describe the weather.

[3] What is less certain is whether Classical Latin used impersonal expressions for this i.e. the equivalent of “it’s cold; French: il fait froid; German: es ist kalt” where it refers to nothing and, logically, would be a neuter expression (as it is in Russian: kholodno [neuter] – (it’s) cold; teplo [neuter] – (it’s) warm):

Frigidum est. It’s cold.

When this kind of issue crops up – and it’s always the “small” points in Latin that cause headaches - anybody who is writing about it will go for attestation i.e. is there documented evidence – anywhere – that a Roman writer actually expressed it that way? And if that fails, can you start working up into, perhaps, the Mediaeval period or even later?

Does it matter? Well, not really: lots of Latin sites online express it that way, and it is perfectly comprehensible but my curiosity was bothering me and I had to go all the way to 1750 to find:

aliquantum nūbilum: a little cloudy

pruīnōsum: frosty

ventōsum: windy

Nūbilum est. It’s cloudy.

Pruīnōsum est. It’s frosty.

Ventōsum est. It’s windy.

And, of course, if your aim is only to read Latin, then it doesn’t matter at all! All that’s important is knowing the meanings of the words.

Posted are adjectives used to describe the weather together with the nouns or verbs to which they’re connected.