Latin Fero: ferre, tuli, latum, Its Meanings and Compounds

Fero means I carry or I bring, and it is the strangest common verb in Latin: its four principal parts are fero, ferre, tuli, latum, and the last two share no letters with the first two. Two roots, three stems, one verb.

Learn the four as one chant. Everything else about fero is regular once you have them.

The present: fero, fers, fert

The present is a third-conjugation verb that drops its linking vowel in three places, so fers and fert stand where you would expect feris and ferit:

• Aquam fert. - He/she carries water.
• Dona ferunt. - They bring gifts.

The commands are short too: fer, ferte, carry! The present beside the other irregulars is on Latin irregular verbs.

Tuli and latum: a different root

The perfect and the participle come from the root of tollo, I lift, the way English went comes from wend and serves go. The endings are the ordinary perfect ones:

• Pater librum tulit. - Father brought the book.
• Lex lata est. - The law was passed.

Everything on the perfect stem follows: tulerat, he/she had carried.

What fero means

Carry is where fero starts, not where it stops:

The last two matter most for reading. With no object to carry, ferunt and an infinitive is people say, and fertur is he/she is said:

• Ferunt eum regem fuisse. - People say he was king.
• Rex fuisse fertur. - He is said to have been king.

The present participle ferens, carrying, gives the most quoted line about gifts in Latin, Laocoon's warning about the wooden horse in Virgil's Aeneid (2.49):

• Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. - I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.

The compounds

A prefix goes in front, the verb inside keeps both its roots, and the prefix often changes its last letter to suit the consonant after it:

So one compound can look like two words: offert, he/she offers, but obtulit, he/she offered. English took both halves: transfer, refer, offer from the present; translation, relation, oblation from the participle. Even the ablative is the carrying-away case, from ablatum.

Two idioms worth knowing:

• Ad urbem se confert. - He/she makes for the city. (se conferre, to take oneself somewhere)
• Quid refert? - What does it matter? (refert, it matters, from res: a different word)

Mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Chant fero, ferre, tuli, latum until the last two stop surprising you.
2. Do the drill below: build the compounds, then sort present from perfect.
3. Then back to the other irregular verbs.