Translation
at last; finally
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Examples
.
He came at last.
.
At long last the city was taken.
.
After many years he finally came back.
?
What on earth do you want?
abutere ?
How much longer will you go on abusing our patience?
Tandem is tam with the demonstrative suffix -dem on it, the same -dem as in idem and ibidem, and it lives two separate lives depending on the kind of sentence it is in.
In a STATEMENT it is "at last, finally", usually after a wait the writer wants you to feel. Tandem aliquando doubles it up for impatience: "at long, long last".
In a QUESTION it stops meaning "at last" altogether and becomes an intensifier of the speaker's irritation, roughly English "on earth", "in heaven's name", or the older "pray". Quid tandem vis is "what on earth do you want", not "what do you finally want". Cicero opens the first Catilinarian with quousque tandem, and the tandem there is doing exactly this job.
That switch is the standard beginner's slip on this word, and it is worth a deliberate check: question mark in sight, translate tandem as exasperation, not as time. The English "tandem" of bicycles is an eighteenth-century joke, a pun on "at length" meaning one behind the other, and has nothing to do with the Latin sense.
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Latin · Free printables
tandem: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "tandem" (at last; finally): 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 6: tandem, maxime, vix and 7 more words.