A Couple Dictionary Questions

Latin Learning Latin
1

Salve,

I am (still) very much a Newbie which will be obvious from my questions. :laughing:

When I retired I gave myself a well-earned treat and bought both the L&S and OUD dictionaries
after going through the various threads about such choices that were here about a year ago or so.
I figured that if I settled on one I really liked best I could easily E-bay the other one at a later time.
Despite having both(!) of these fine books in HC I still run into problems and would like your ideas.

First of all: How to handle words that are beyond your level?

That is, words whose endings, etc. in actual usage might be beyond your existing Newbie text book vocabulary. A really simple, obvious example might be,

Orbis Veteribus Notus

, which is the title of map #1 from S. Butler’s outstanding Atlas of Ancient and Classical Geography; A godsend to any student of Antiquity if ever there was. I’ve struggled some with this which I think ought to be translated as, “Notable Places of the Old(ancient) World.” There is no entry for “veteribus” on it’s own;
You’d need to know all your various endings to figure out the root and some common words are not
given with every possible suffix out there. I’ve yet to find an easily consulted list that says something
like, “if your word ends with [blank]-suffix, it likely means this,…”

Secondly: What is the best English-to-Latin dictionary, if there is one?

Since this might provide another avenue to learning.

I admit that better study on my part is an eventual answer. But I really enjoy the history of Antiquity: it’s the reason I would ever even try to learn classical languages in the first place. So I often try to handle stuff that may be over my head in langauge but are the topics I’m eager to read about. Anyway, I’d welcome any thoughts on tackling words that may be obscure or over your level. Plus, finding a really good Eng.-to-Latin text would be awesome as well.

My Thanks in Advance,

Cathexis/Andrew

2

Andrew, this is simply part of learning the language. Latin is an inflected language, which means the structure of the language depends on changes in the form of the words. The upshot for you is that you have to learn your paradigms, your declensions and conjugations, and how they are used to convey meaning. You would actually look up veteribus under vetus, it’s “lexical form.” Veteribus is dative, plural here. Orbis is nominative singular, lit. “orb” but here meaning “world.” notus is a nominative singular adjective modifying orbis, “known” and it picks up the dative much as the prepositional complement for “known” in English is often “to.” “The World Known to the Ancients.”

So there is a bit more to reading Latin than simply looking up the words in a dictionary…

3

Barry,

Thanks for your patient words!

Andrew

4

To get you started:

5

In my (pre-WWW) day, I used to walk around with a Collins Gem Latin pocket dictionary in my pocket: > https://www.amazon.com/Collins-Pocket-L > … 0007441991 (though I think it was more compact 30 years ago)

My copy, bought in 1966, measures 11x7.5x1.5cm or 4.5x3x.75in. I’m still impressed with how much information they could cram in there. There are even paradigms, numerals, a section on meter,and a Latin family tree. You’ll notice that in the English-Latin section, only the infinitives of verbs are shown. If you want to see all the principal parts of the verb, just pop back to the Latin-English section. Granted, it’s no Lewis&Short, but for quick reference, it’s pretty handy.

6

When you don’t know the headword (dictionary lookup word), try this: https://latin.ucant.org/

If you have a smartphone, you can find both iPhone and Android versions that work offline. Look for Whitaker’s Words.

I have used Traupman’s mass-market student dictionary for years. Strong points: cheap; small mass-market paperback size; contains many proper nouns; has most of the grammar tables you need; the examples are translated into English. Traupman is a student dictionary, not a scholarly dictionary. But I am not a Latin scholar, so I judge it appropriate for me. I’ve worn out three of them.

https://www.amazon.com/Bantam-College-Latin-English-Dictionary/dp/055359012X

I also have an Oxford Classical Dictionary, which is helpful now and then.

7

A trick I have often used is to Google the word together with “Wiktionary”. For example, if you do it with “evanuerit”, you will immediately find this.

8

Wow!

Barry was right about doing my homework and I guess I knew that but hoped for some work arounds.
You guys were very helpful with the suggestions you made. At least nobody flamed me for being lazy. :blush:
This forum is the best!

Thank you all so much,

Andrew