about making compound words

Latin Learning Latin
1

hi. :astonished: i have questions about word formation. about making compound nouns.

faux + cervix + oid

it becomes fauci-cervic-oid? or, according to gildersleeve grammar, “the consonant stems either drop the consonant or add -i”, so fau-cervic-oid?

2

http://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/compound-words

I wonder if the above is what you are looking for.

3

hi :smiley: i want detailed instruction on how to combine nouns to make a new word, but the allen and greenough page you showed me seems to be about the meanings compounds can express.

for example, you know some grammar’s pages that can show me the correct way of combining fauces + cervix + -oides, or, falx + anguis + -us?

4

I had a feeling the A & G page wasn’t what you were looking for. Unfortunately I haven’t got the answer to your question. Fingers crossed someone will be able to point you in the right direction.

5

anyways thanks! i want to send a message to a game company about how the monsters’ names are wrongly formed from latin words in a certain game. but i myself turned out to know the rules of the formation of words very poorly and cant seem to complete typing the message without somebody’s help.

in the game there are such monsters :

calamusoid (probably compound of calamus + -oides, which should be calamoid and not calamusoid)

ambulimax (ambulare + limax, meaning the slug that walks with legs)

6

in gildersleeve i saw this note “the first part (of a compound noun) is rarely, if ever, a verb. apleius uses this form poscinummius.” (a note to the section 195)

now in the game i play there is an animal named ambulimax. its meaning is a slug that walks (with four legs). according to the above quoted part of gildersleeve, i can guess a more correct way of naming it would be

ambulilimax

or, maybe, as the infinitive form is ambulare, i might be

ambulalimax

but as the noun stems ending with a, o, u regularly weaken those vowels into i before the consonant of the second part, by analogy

ambulilimax would be better.

these guessings i made just relying on the section 195 of gildersleeve. if ambulimax is still possible, please explain why.