Fortis, forte: agreement is not rhyme

Family two: fortis, forte

Third-declension endings, with one form for masculine and feminine together and a separate neuter.

Omnis, omne, all, every, runs on this, and so do gravis, heavy, and brevis, short. Three things mark the family:

The ablative is the one that catches people. A third-declension noun takes -e; a third-declension adjective takes -i, even on the same word pair:

• cum rege forti - with a brave king

One-ending adjectives: ingens, ingentis

These share a single nominative singular across all three genders, so the dictionary gives the genitive to show the stem. After that they are fortis:

• Urbs ingens est. - The city is huge.
• Urbem ingentem video. - I see a huge city.
• Felix es. - You are lucky.

A few, such as vetus, veteris, old, are not i-stems and take -e, -um and neuter -a: cum amico vetere, with an old friend.

Agreement is about categories, not sounds

Parse each word on its own, then compare the three labels. If case, number and gender match, the pair agrees, whatever the letters do:

Change the noun's case, and the adjective follows it:

Gender comes from the noun, not its ending

Third-declension nominatives are a poor guide to gender, so learn it with the noun. The adjective shows what you learned: