Dictionary formalienus, aliena, alienum

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#941 of 1,000Core 1000

Translation

belonging to another, another's; foreign, strange

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Examples

.

Another's property is not yours.

laborabat.

He was working in another man's field.

.

He had a great debt.

.

We do not love foreign customs.

.

He came to the king at an unsuitable time.

Alienus, aliena, alienum is first and second declension, built on alius. The core sense is "belonging to somebody else", and everything else runs out from it: foreign, strange, unsuitable, out of place, and at full stretch hostile. With an ablative, or with a and the ablative, it means removed from or out of keeping with something.

The phrase to learn is "aes alienum", literally another man's bronze, which is the ordinary Latin for debt. That single idiom explains why a Roman speech about aes alienum is about money owed and not about imported metalwork. Its natural opposite is proprius, one's own. English took alien, alienate and the legal alienation of property straight through, keeping the ownership sense the Romans had.

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alienus: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is taught in chapter 10, lesson 6: alienus, ulterior, condo and 7 more words.