Translation
good
Examples
.
He is a good man.
.
I did this in good faith.
Melior .
Peace is better than war.
Optimus .
He was the best of them all.
bibimus.
We drank good wine.
Take the rank with a pinch of salt. sits at the tail of this list because of what our particular corpus happens to contain, not because it is a rare or advanced word: it is one of the first adjectives any Latin course teaches, and on most frequency lists it would be somewhere near the top. Treat it as a core word that landed here by accident of counting.
It is a first-and-second declension adjective and entirely regular in the positive: , , , , in the masculine, , , , , in the feminine, and in the neuter. The irregularity is all in the comparison, and it is suppletive, meaning the other degrees come from entirely different roots: comparative melior, , "better"; superlative optimus, optima, optimum, "best". The matching adverbs are , , optime. There is nothing to derive here, so learn , melior, optimus as a chant, the way you learn "good, better, best".
The neuter works as a noun: is "a good thing, a benefit", and the plural means "goods, property, an estate". Phrases you will meet constantly: , in good faith, which English took whole; , the Roman shorthand for a decent man; , the highest good, the target of every ancient ethical system. Descendants: Italian buono, Spanish bueno, French bon, with melior surviving intact as migliore, mejor and meilleur.
Where this fits
Add to review queue
Track this word in your spaced-repetition queue and be tested on it at the right interval.
Go to my review queueLatin · Free printables
bonus: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "bonus" (good): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
Free for members
The printable worksheets, infographics and PDFs are free with an account. Start a free week and download as many as you like.
Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 4.