Ch 3 · Lesson 9Latin · Chapter 3 · Lesson 9 · Grammar primer
Rex, urbs, corpus: third-declension gender
Masculine, feminine, neuter, and the nominative says none of it. A few endings help (-tio feminine, -men neuter); the rest comes with the word, because the adjective has to agree.
The short version
Third-declension gender comes with the word
.
Why?Hide
is masculine, feminine, neuter, and the nominative says none of it. A few endings help: -tio and -tas are feminine, -or masculine (but and are feminine), -men neuter, and -us with a genitive in -oris neuter. Everything else you learn with the dictionary entry, because the adjective has to agree.
Gender: learn it with the word
In the first declension almost everything is feminine; in the third the nominative is a poor guide. Adjectives must agree, so a wrong guess makes wrong Latin.
.- The king is good..- The city is large..- The body is large.
The patterns that genuinely hold:
| Ending | Gender | Example |
|---|---|---|
-tio, -tas | feminine | |
-or | masculine | |
-men | neuter | |
-us, gen. - | neuter | |
-us, gen. -utis | feminine | |
-e, -al, -ar | neuter | |
Two carve-outs. and are feminine despite -or (and a few -or nouns, such as , sea, are neuter): , a good wife. And the -us nouns split by genitive: , is neuter, , feminine.
Caput (the head) and os (the mouth) are neuter, pes (the foot) is masculine. All three are third declension, and their nominatives do not say so.
Learn the dictionary entry whole: , , masculine, is one fact, not three.
Going further: The genitive is not optional here and the rest of the guide, when you want them. This lesson does not need them.
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