Hi, Latin has loads of wonderful adjectival suffixes, eg bundus etc.
But I can’t find one which means like, eg duck like, doglike etc. With binomial species names, where the second one is an adjective, there must be a way of saying ducklike.
I can find pertaining to a duck
anatarius, anataria, anatarium [ADJ]
and of a duck anatinus but no ducklike.
Am I expecting too much from Latin language? Or maybe one of the above is synonymous with ducklike?
Help!
Just want to bump this question. There must be an answer?
Robin
I think you are expecting Latin to be too much like English. There is no suffix in Latin that functions quite like -like (!) does in English. The meaning you are looking for might be inherent in a particular word, but remember that the way we break it up in English might be different from the way Latin breaks it up. Just as an example, “warlike.” Sounds straightforward, right? But…
All of which may in the appropriate context be expressed by the one English word “warlike.”
Or how about doglike? The same resource above returns:
cănātim (better canum ritu).
But this is an adverb:
How would we say doglike as an adjective? “They are doglike in appearance?” No corresponding adjective, so something like “Similes canibus…” They are like dogs or similar to dogs…
With > binomial species names, > .. there must be a way of saying ducklike.
With binomial names, the suffix -oïdes, imported from greek, is employed. e.g., turdoïdes, rosoideae.
Anatoïdes I guess.
Perseus L & S has 25 ancient instances of it — most are from Pliny’s Historia: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/resolveform?type=end&lookup=oides&lang=la
That’s certainly not how it was done in classical Latin. If you look up the examples in Pliny, that’s not what’s happening with the words containing -oid-. Look them up in the OLD or L&S to confirm this. Of your examples above, neither appear either in the OLD or in L&S. Do not confuse later Latinate nomenclature in scientific terminology with Latin as the ancient spoken and literary language.
Guys thank you so much! Both your answers have b been a great help. I keep a Latin diary and wanted to describe a duck teddy. I had thought of using similis. Despite it not being any type of Latin except linnaean, I shall try oides in my diary.
Yours robin.
Pupa similis anati
Pupa anatoides?
BTW warlike uses suffix otherwise than doglike catlike. It is not like a war, but likely to go to war.
Thanks again guys
OLD definition 2 shows caninus, a, um, meaning “characteristic of a dog, resembling that of a dog.”
The word is formed from canus + inus. -nus is the actual suffix, with i added for ease
of pronunciation.
-nus is a common suffix added to other nouns also to create an adjective to mean “characteristic of”
that noun. A good number of this and other suffixes are listed in Allen and Greenough at 242ff. For
instance A&G list divus, god, divinus, divine, femina, woman, femineus, feminine, etc.
The OLD has the following example from Sallust of a use of caninus:
canina, ut ait Appius, facundia exercebatur
“A canine [doglike] facility for talk was being exercised, as Appius [mockingly] says.”
We take from this that the speakers in the assembly were for all intents and purposes but
barking and baying. This is in contrast to our own assembly in Washington, for whom caninus would
be a compliment.
of a use of caninus:
canina, ut ait Appius, facundia exercebatur
“A canine [doglike] facility for talk was being exercised, as Appius [mockingly] says.”
We take from this that the speakers in the assembly were for all intents and purposes but
barking and baying.
This is in contrast to our own assembly in Washington, for whom caninus would
be a compliment.
Just reread your post from several years ago. and realised how funny it was!
Just reread your post from a couple of years ago, and realised how funny the last bit was.
Sorry for delay in reply.
Doctor Badger