Translation
almost, nearly
Examples
perierunt.
Almost all of them perished.
.
The city was almost taken.
.
He was on the road almost the whole night.
.
I said almost the same thing.
relictum .
Almost nothing was left.
Paene means "almost" and sits immediately in front of the word it limits. It is the prefix in paeninsula, "almost-island", which is where English peninsula comes from, and in paenultimus, the last but one, which gives penultimate.
Two words nearby do different jobs. Prope is primarily "near" in space and only secondarily "nearly"; fere softens a general statement, "roughly, as a rule", rather than falling just short of a fact. Paene is the one that means the thing nearly happened and did not. Medieval scribes drop the diphthong and write pene, which is what this corpus mostly shows; the classical spelling paene is the one to learn, and the two are the same word.
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paene: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "paene" (almost, nearly): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 13.