Hey all,
We all know that the inflected nature of Latin makes certain letters very commonly the last on words (e.g. 's' in 2nd dec. masc. nom. sing. [-us]and also in 1st/2nd dec. masc./fem/nt. dat./abl. pl. [-is]) and consequently some letters very rarely end words or perhaps, as I want you to find out, never.
Basically, I would like examples of Latin words that end in each letter of the alphabet. I should stress at this point that I do not want one word that can be so madly inflected that it itself can end in all the letters of the alphabet!
For example, for "a" you could have puella, da, vestra etc, and for "b" ab, ob etc.. If you could give all the necessary information on the word, i.e. case/dec./num./gen. or mood/pers./num./tense inter alia, that would be nice.
Is it possible?
~dave
P.S. A philology professor said in a lecture last term that the onlytwoverbs in the first person singular present indicative to end in 'm' are sum (and its compounds) and possum.
Naturally I felt goaded to try and prove him wrong and soon stumbled across the first person singular of the defective verb "inquam". I was soon, however, shot down as this specific first person, though used indicatively in Classical times was subjunctive in origin, as in "I would say".
This led onto a widescale debate on whether "inquit" represents the indicative third person perfect as well as the indicative third person present. Even though it is used in clear past tenses, it could be argued that it is a vivid present or a form of repraesentatio.
The grammar books have been divided throughout the past centuries, as have the dictionaries, and certain evidence does exist in support of their being a perfect form (which is what I, among others, believe), but I fear I have bored you sufficiently hitherto!
