Ferox

Latin Learning Latin
1

Ferox (fierce, ferocious) is an adjective. Yet in my word list, I see it listed like this:

ferox -ocis

This looks like a noun entry (I’ve only really learned the first two declensions). The adjectives I have studied all have three parts for the masculine, feminine and neuter nouns. The adjectives themselves decline like nouns of the first two declensions.

So my questions are:

  1. Are there adjectives which delcine according to the paradigms of declensions 3, 4 and 5?

  2. What does the -ocis in the ferox listing above mean? If it were a noun it looks like it would be the genitive singular ending. But as an adjective what does it mean?

2

Saluē, Feles!

Indeed! “fer?x” is in adjective of the third declension. But worry not! Adjectives only go up to the 3rd (no 4th or 5th). They decline just like nouns of the third declension, with the following exception:

Third declension adjectives don’t have a distinct ablative case; the ablative form of 3rd declension adjectives is identical to the dative, ending in i.

So fer?x is declined like this:

fer?x
fer?cis
fer?cī
fer?cem
fer?cī

And so forth.

If you have any other questions, or if I haven’t been clear, please say so.

3

But how does ferox agree with the gender of masculine, feminine and neuter nouns?

For example, great man, great woman and great rock are magnus vir, magna femina and magnum saxum. So if I wanted to say fierce man, fierce woman and fierce rock, would all three nouns be preceeded by ferox? In other words, ferox won’t change like magnus -a -um does to match the gender of the noun it is modifying?

Thanks for the declension, I haven’t touched the 3rd declension yet, I wonder why it is introduced so much later.

4
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5

And finally, to answer your question, in most cases, the gender of a 3rd declension adjective is not obvious from the form alone; you would say ‘ferox vir’, ‘ferox femina’ and ‘ferox animal’.

So there are some adjectives which agree in case and number, but not gender as ferox is unchanged for ‘vir’, ‘femina’ and ‘animal’, if I am understanding you correctly?

The magnus -a -um system I have been following at this point of my studies doesn’t apparently pertain to all adjectives I gather.

6

Adjectives always agree in case, number, and gender with the noun they modify. In the case of some third declension adjectives, however, there is no distinction between the genders.

Unlike 1st/2nd declension adjectives, which have three forms for the endings (one for each gender), 3rd declension adjectives can have either one, two, or three terminations.

The third declension uses essentially the same set of endings for all three genders (except neuter accusative singular and plural are the same as the nominatives), so the number of terminations an adjective has really only matters in the nominative.

Adjectives with three terminations are listed like this: acer, acris, acre (“sharp, keen, fierce”), in the same order as adjectives like magnus, a, um. So ‘acer’ is the masculine form, ‘acris’ is the feminine, and ‘acre’ is the neuter.

Adjectives with two terminations have the same forms for masculine and feminine, and a slightly different one for the neuter. omnis, omne (“every, all”) is an example.

Adjectives with one termination, like ferox, ferocis use the same form for all three genders. The genitive singular is generally given for such adjectives so that you know what to use for the stem, since it isn’t always clear from the nominative alone.

7

Let’s write out the paradigms for the heck of it:

uir fer?x
uirī fer?cis
uir? fer?cī
uirum fer?cem
uir? fer?cī

uirī fer?cēs
uir?rum fer?cium
uirīs fer?cibus
uir?s fer?cēs
uirīs fer?cibus

__

fēmina fer?x
fēminae fer?cis
fēminae fer?cī
fēminam fer?cem
fēmin? fer?cī

fēminae fer?cēs
fēmin?rum fer?cium
fēminīs fer?cibus
fēmin?s fer?cēs
fēminīs fer?cibus

uerbum fer?x
uerbī fer?cis
uerb? fer?cī
uerbum fer?x* (naturally, all neuter accusatives are identical to their nominative forms)
uerb? fer?cī

uerba fer?cia
uerb?rum fer?cium
uerbīs fer?cibus
uerba fer?cia
uerbīs fer?cibus

8

spiphany and lucus,

Thank you both for your replies - I understand it now. I haven’t had worked with the 3rd declension yet so I of course was unaware of why ferox was written the way it was.

9

The third declension is by far the coolest. :smiley: Enjoy!