Line drawing of mox
Coloured illustration of mox
#112 of 1,000Core 1000

Translation

soon; presently

Test yourself on mox

Three quick questions. No account needed.

Know this word? Create a free account to track it.

Examples

.

I shall come soon.

.

Presently the king himself was there.

, .

At first he was afraid, then soon he laughed.

crevit.

Soon after the war the city grew.

.

Nobody knows what is about to happen.

Mox is an indeclinable adverb with two settings. Looking forward from now it is "soon, shortly, in a little while". Inside a narrative it is a plain sequencer, "next, then", and the historians use it that way constantly: primo ... deinde ... mox strings events together without promising that any of them happened quickly. Translating every mox in Tacitus as "soon" will make his campaigns read faster than he meant them to.

It needs no preposition and no case after it, and it can sit directly in front of a prepositional phrase: mox post bellum is good Latin for "soon after the war".

Unlike most of the high-frequency Latin adverbs it barely survives into the Romance languages, which built their words for "soon" out of other material. If you know Spanish or French, this is one you have to learn cold rather than recognise.

Where this fits

Used in

Add to review queue

Track this word in your spaced-repetition queue and be tested on it at the right interval.

Chapters 1 and 2 free

Meet this word in a story

Every course has graded stories written only with words you have been taught, plus grammar drills, a games arcade and printable worksheets. Chapters 1 and 2 are free.

Chapters 1 and 2 free, forever. Plus: 7 days free, then $5 a month for all eleven languages.

Start learning free

Latin · Free printables

mox: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "mox" (soon; presently): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

This word is taught in chapter 2, lesson 2: mox, frater, dominus and 11 more words.