Latin · Chapter 9 · Lesson 21 · Themed review
Corpus et anima
Head, heart, hand and soul. The body words Latin gave to every Romance language, and to English anatomy wholesale.
Practise this lesson
12-word session
A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.
Worth knowing
Corpus et anima: four words for the inside of a person
You met , , , and back in chapter two. This session finishes the body and then does the harder half: Latin has four words for what is inside a person, and they are not interchangeable.
| Rank | Word | Meaning | Sits where |
|---|---|---|---|
| 209 | | mind, intention | the intellect, the plan |
| 254 | | heart, feelings | thought and feeling together |
| 288 | | breast, chest, heart | the chest as the seat of emotion |
| 316 | | soul, life, breath | the breath that makes a body alive |
is the reasoning mind: your intention, your purpose, what you meant. sana in sano - a sound mind in a sound body - is Juvenal complaining about what people pray for, and it is the sentence this whole session hangs on.
, is the heart, and for a Roman that is where you both feel and think. It has the best English family of any word here, and one of them is a genuine surprise:
- cordial, courage (through French
coeur), accord, discord, concord - record -
-plus. To record something is to bring it back to the heart, which is to say, to remember it.
is the chest, used the way English uses breast in older writing: the place feelings are kept. It gives pectoral and expectorate.
and are the same root split in two, and the pair is worth pinning down. (masculine) is the mind, spirit, courage, will - animosity, unanimous, magnanimous. (feminine) is the breath of life, and the classical poets already use it for the soul that leaves the body at death; Christian writers narrowed it to the soul in the theological sense and used it constantly - animal, animate. sits at rank 316 for the same reason sits at 219.
The outside of the body
| Latin | Meaning | English descendants |
|---|---|---|
| head | capital, captain, chapter, decapitate |
| hand | manual, manuscript, manufacture, manage |
| foot | pedal, pedestrian, impede, expedite |
| eye | ocular, monocle, inoculate |
| mouth, face | oral, orifice |
| voice, word | vocal, vocation, advocate, revoke, vowel |
| body | corpse, corporate, corps |
| blood | , consanguinity |
is not only the sound. It also means a word, an utterance, so is with one voice and is what the people say, not the noise they make.
, pedis also means a metrical foot, which is how Latin poetry is measured, and you will meet it in that sense constantly. Beware of one false friend: English paed- words such as paediatric are Greek pais, child, and have nothing to do with . Pedestrian is Latin; paediatrician is not.
The declensions that catch people
,is fourth declension, not second. It looks likeand behaves nothing like it. It is also feminine.,and,and,and,are all neuter, so the nominative and accusative are identical and word order will not rescue you.,,, pedis,,and,are third declension: learn the genitive or you do not have the word.,(mouth) is not, ossis(bone). The genitive is the only thing that separates them.
Idioms you will actually meet
cordi- it is dear to me, literally it is to me for a heart
- by hand, in person
- to retreat, literally to carry the foot back
- to set before the eyes, to make vivid
Latin reaches for a body part where English reaches for an abstraction, and is the clearest case: it means hand, and then band of men, and then power over something. When a text says a thing is in somebody, it is in his control.
Try it
sana in sano. - A sound mind in a sound body.
, . - The voice of the people is the voice of god.
. - The heart and the mind are not the same.
lavat. - One hand washes the other.
regit. - The soul rules the body.