Reading a Latin Dictionary Entry: Principal Parts and Genitives
How to interpret Latin noun, verb and adjective entries, including the principal parts of verbs, genitive endings and gender labels.
Latin dictionary entries look cryptic at first: amō, amāre, amāvī, amātum. Each piece is a clue that helps you build every form of the word.
Nouns
A noun entry gives the nominative singular, the genitive singular and the gender:
- puella, -ae (f.) — girl
- dominus, -ī (m.) — master
- rēx, rēgis (m.) — king
- nōmen, nōminis (n.) — name
The genitive shows the declension and the stem:
| Genitive ending | Declension |
|---|---|
| -ae | 1st |
| -ī | 2nd |
| -is | 3rd |
| -ūs | 4th |
| -eī or -ēī | 5th |
For rēx, rēgis, the stem is rēg-, so the accusative is rēgem, and so on.
Verbs: the principal parts
A verb entry gives four principal parts:
| Part | Form | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | amō | I love |
| 2nd | amāre | to love (infinitive) |
| 3rd | amāvī | I have loved (perfect) |
| 4th | amātum | the supine, from which the participle is formed |
From these you can build all tenses:
- The present stem comes from the infinitive: amā-.
- The perfect stem comes from the third part: amāv-.
- The participle stem comes from the fourth part: amāt-.
Other examples:
- videō, vidēre, vīdī, vīsum — to see
- regō, regere, rēxī, rēctum — to rule
- audiō, audīre, audīvī, audītum — to hear
- sum, esse, fuī — to be
Adjectives
Adjectives give three endings for the three genders:
- bonus, -a, -um — good (masculine, feminine, neuter)
- fortis, -e — brave
Other abbreviations
| Abbreviation | Meaning |
|---|---|
| m. / f. / n. | masculine / feminine / neuter |
| adj. | adjective |
| adv. | adverb |
| prep. | preposition |
| conj. | conjunction |
| + abl. | takes the ablative |
| + acc. | takes the accusative |
Tips
- Learn to spot the genitive ending.
- Learn principal parts with each verb.
- Use the dictionary to check all forms.
English Latin Dictionary
Offline English–Latin dictionary for students, classics and word-origin lookups
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