Venus and vēnus, moror and mōror.
Latin minimal pairs distinguished only by vowel length
- Thread starter Philip Newton
- Start date
lutum and luteus ('mud'/'mire' and 'muddy') vs lūtum and lūteus ('dyer's greenweed' and 'yellow').
pilus ('a hair') vs pīlus (a kind of army division)
Apparently there have been determined to be a few minimal pairs where the distinguishing length is a hidden quantity, e.g. lŭstrum ('bog'/'morass') vs lūstrum (an expiatory sacrifice or period of five years) and vĭllīs (dat./abl. plur, of villa) vs vīllīs (dat./abl/ plur. of vīllus).
pilus ('a hair') vs pīlus (a kind of army division)
Apparently there have been determined to be a few minimal pairs where the distinguishing length is a hidden quantity, e.g. lŭstrum ('bog'/'morass') vs lūstrum (an expiatory sacrifice or period of five years) and vĭllīs (dat./abl. plur, of villa) vs vīllīs (dat./abl/ plur. of vīllus).
There's also fodit vs fōdit.
Is vēnus found in the nominative? I've only ever seen it in the accusative or ablative, and those forms aren't ambiguous with any form of Vĕnus.
I didn't think about it, haven't seen nominative too. I only listed it because they put it under vēnus in L&S.
mānibus (dat./abl. of mānēs) vs manibus (dat./abl. plur. of manus)
rēmus ('oar') vs Remus .
rēmus ('oar') vs Remus .
Ducēs and dūcēs, regēs and rēgēs.
Good additions, which reminds me of ēdŭcō ('rear'/'raise'/'educate' inf. educare) vs ēdūcō ('lead forth'/'draw out' inf. educere), though the latter is occasionally used as a synonym of the former.
I think you have your vill- stems the wrong way around - at least, my textbook says that a (country) house is a vīlla with long i.
This source says it's short in villa, but I'm not sure how it's been determined to be one way or the other. You can perhaps now see why dictionaries tend to be gun-shy about marking hidden quantities.
JCL?
Junior Classical League. It's a youth organization which promotes the study of classical language/literature and culture among high school students. Wikipedia has a nice list of the events and competitions we do at conventions here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Junior_Classical_League#Activities
I don't get why people on the Internet always write acronyms without explaning what they mean lol. Not talking specifically about you, it's just something that I noticed lately.
Irony
Also, I think having to type out the meaning of the acronym defeats the purpose of using one.
Well, everyone knows that pretty much every one knows what "lol" means, but that is less so with acronyms of little-known organizations or the like. It's as if, say, I was on some other forum and referred to "LD" for Latin Discussion, whereas many people reading me were unlikely to know what I was talking about.
Yeah, I was just picking fun.
The JCL is pretty popular in the United States! I figured it would be known among Latinists.
Ah. Well...
Anyway, this has made me realize that I myself regularly use here the abbreviation OLD, and though I think many people here know what it stands for, maybe not everyone does. In case, it stands for Oxford Latin Dictionary. I use also L&S, but this one I think really every regular member at any rate knows.
Swamp is actually Pălūs, the u is different too.