situs

This entry covers two words that share a spelling. The corpus forms sita, situm, situ are the perfect participle situs, sita, situm of sino, "to let, allow", long since frozen into an adjective meaning "situated, lying". It is the workhorse of geographical prose: urbs in monte sita est is the standard way to say where a place is, and English situate and situation come straight from it.

Beside it sits the fourth declension noun situs, situs, m., "site, position", which supplies de situ and situs loci. The same noun has a second and unrelated-looking sense, "neglect, mould, rust", the grime that settles on a thing left alone, so situs in a poet may be dirt rather than geography.