Kilo Lingo

#147 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

often

Examples

.

I have often said this.

cogitavi.

I have thought about you often and at length.

fecisti?

How often have you done this?

Saepius .

I came more often than I wanted to.

mutatur.

Fortune often changes.

Saepe is an adverb of frequency with a full comparison of its own: saepe, saepius, saepissime. Worth noticing is that saepius does not always mean "more often than something else". Like Latin comparatives generally it can stand alone as "rather often, repeatedly, more than once", with nothing named for it to beat. The same is true of maior, "rather large", and longius, "rather far", and reading every comparative as a genuine comparison is a habit that produces some odd English.

It sits between the two absolutes, semper and numquam, both of which are also in this list, and it is the natural word for the habitual: what someone used to do, what generally happens.

Saepe left almost nothing behind. French built souvent out of subinde, Spanish uses the phrase a menudo, Italian spesso comes from spissus, "thick". This is one of the very common Latin adverbs you have to learn cold, because no modern language will hand it to you.

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saepe: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is part of lesson 3.