How good is your Latin

How good is your Latin?

Many English words and phrases are Latin, exactly the same today as they were two thousand years ago often with much the same meaning.

Words like

plus, minus, super, extra, minimum, maximum, actor, focus, in, circus, doctor, exit

are pure Latin.

Here are three less common Latin words used in English. Do you know what they mean?

dictator

impetus

humus

What are the Latin words and phrases we use to mean

‘and the rest’

e _ c _ _ _ _ _

‘round the other way’

v _ _ _ v _ _ _ _

‘against’

v _ _ _ _ _

‘after death’

p _ _ _ m _ _ _ _ _

‘for ever’

a _ i _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

If you are interested in astronomy, you may know the Latin for

twins

archer

Do you know what these Latin animals are?

leo	tigris
serpens	porcus

As well as pure Latin words, English is full of words which come from Latin. These words will have part of the Latin word somewhere in them. For example, from the Latin porto ‘I carry’ we get porter, portable and transport – all of which have to do with carrying. (The last word, transport, has another Latin word as part of it: can you spot it?) In the same way we get words like pedestrian, pedal and centipede from pedes ‘feet’.

See how many English words you can find which derive from these Latin words:

Latin word	English meaning
mare	sea
finis	end
luna	moon
agricola	farmer
canis	dog
astrum	star
hostis	enemy
navis	ship
milites	soldiers
centum	hundred
liber	book
domus	house
gladius	sword
tractor	pulled
terra	land
dens	tooth
dico	I speak
audio	I hear
manus	hand
corpus	body

The Latin word sub means under or beneath and is used in English as a prefix in words like submerge and substandard. How many other ’subs’ can you think of?

What about words starting with trans ‘across’?

And words starting with inter ‘between’?

‘and the rest’	e _ c _ _ _ _ _
‘round the other way’	v _ _ _ v _ _ _ _
‘against’	v _ _ _ _ _
‘after death’	p _ _ _ m _ _ _ _ _
‘for ever’	a _ i _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _