Kilo Lingo

#698 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

sword, blade

Examples

.

The sword was in the king's hand.

.

He defeated the enemy with the sword.

strinxit .

He drew his sword and went into battle.

Enses lucebant.

The soldiers' swords were gleaming in the sun.

.

No one came into the camp without a sword.

Ensis, ensis is third declension masculine and an i-stem, so genitive plural ensium. The nominative in -is tempts people into treating it as feminine; it is not. Beyond that the declension is unremarkable.

What matters about ensis is register. It is the poets' sword. Prose writes gladius; Virgil, Ovid and Lucan write ensis, partly because ense and ensem scan where gladio and gladium do not. So finding ensis in a text tells you something about the writer's ambitions before it tells you anything about the weapon. Later Latin verse and hymnody keep the habit. It left almost nothing to the Romance languages, which took their swords from spatha instead - French epee, Spanish espada, Italian spada.

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 queue

Latin · Free printables

ensis: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "ensis" (sword, blade): 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 week

This word is part of lesson 14.