Latin Verb Basics

Author: Indigo Curnick

Date: 2025-02-01

#latin  


With a formal study of Latin it makes the most sense to begin with a study of verbs. Unfortunately, and I'll be frank, verbs are a complex topic within Latin. Unlike English, Latin verbs can take on many, many different forms. There are also many more tenses in Latin than English. While this presents a significant amount of material the student of Latin will need to memorise, there are also some genuine advantages within the language itself. For example, we can often drop pronouns entirely from sentences because the conjugated verb will carry that information.

In this blog, we're going to cover everything that you will need to understand how Latin verbs function. Then, I will provide supplementary blogs later which cover every possible conjugation of Latin verbs. Think of this as more of a high level reference or index rather than in depth guide.

This blog will also serve as a kind of Index for all verb blogs. At the end of this article will be a big list of all verb forms possible. I will update it so it always links to blogs which exist. I'm aiming to have all verb forms covered by the end of 2025!

Verb Basics

Just to quickly review what is a verb, even outside of the context of Latin. A verb is a word which can declare or assert something about a person, place or a thing e.g. e.g the man laughs, the town is captured, the leaf falls. An easy way to think about verbs is that they are doing words.

Verbs generally come in two flavours: transitive and intransitive verbs. Transitive verbs require a direct object for the action to be completed e.g. we have finished our work. Here our wok is the direct object. An intransitive verb does not require a direct object e.g. she laughed. Here she is the subject, laughed is the verb, and there is no direct object because you can not laugh something.

Conjugations

Latin has four classes of regular verbs, they are referred to as the conjugations. The conjugations are determined by the final vowel of the present infinitive active after the -re has been removed (we'll cover what present infinitive active means soon!). That is as detailed in the table

Present Indinitive Present stem Vowel
First Conjugation amāre amā- ā
Second Conjugation monēre monē- ē
Third Conjugation regere rege- ĕ
Fourth Conjugation audīre audī- ī

Each of the four classes of verbs conjugate differently, so they will unfortunately need to be memorised.

Latin also has a number of irregular verbs. I'll cover the irregular verbs in a later blog.

Principle Parts

If you look up verbs in a Latin dictionary, they usually list four forms of the verb (see references at the end for my suggested dictionary which does this!). For example, the entry for to love in my dictionary lists the following Latin

amō, -āre, -āvī, -ātum

In order these are the first person singular of the present indicative, the infinitive, the person singular of the perfect indicative and the past participle (don't worry about what those words mean right now, come back here to reference again after you've read the whole blog).

Notice how the dictionary doesn't actually give the whole word of each of the final three tenses; you have to construct them yourself. The way you do that is by removing the final vowel and then attatching the ending. So, for amō we have

Note that some dictionaries might give the perfect passive participle rather than the past participle. At the front of the dictionary they should give an indication of what system they use.

You will use these to construct the various conjugations of the verbs!

Personal Endings

Latin verbs conjugate based on who is doing the action. You've likely heard of the concept of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person, which is exactly what's going on here. We can also have singular or plural. Therefore, we have 6 possible personal endings, which it would be wise to memorise.

Singular

Plural

Tense

Tense refers to when the action takes place relative to the current time. Latin has 6 tenses, more than English has.

The six tenses are as follows

Let's go through each in turn to understand them

The present tense means the action is happening now e.g. I lead, I am leading.

The future tense means the action will happen in the future e.g. I will lead, I will be leading.

The imperfect tense is for ongoing or repeated actions in the past e.g. I was leading, I used to lead. It can have a few English equivalents. For example, I was reading a book when she called indicates that the reading was an action in progress in the past. Alternatively, when I was young, I used to read every night, the I used to indicates the action took place over time in the past. This is a somewhat complex verb form for English speakers to get used to, as in English these ideas are separated out by auxiliary words.

The perfect tense is for actions completed in the past at the time of speaking e.g. I loved, I have loved

The future perfect tense is for completed actions in the future e.g. by that time, I will have come back.

The pluperfect is for indicating which of two events happened first in the past e.g. by the time she called, I had already eaten dinner. The I had already eaten indicates it happened before she called.

Mood

Latin has three moods. A mood indicates a manner of indicating the action or state of being. The three moods are as follows

Voice

Voice is used for transitive verbs for whether the subject is performing the action (the active voice) or receives the action (the passive voice).

So, for example, the sentence I threw the ball is in the active voice because the subject, I, does the throwing. Alternatively, the sentence the ball was thrown by me is in the passive voice, because now the subject is the ball, which was thrown. Thus the person doing the throwing, I/me, has become the object of the sentence. It's very common in formal or scientific writing to use the passive voice without the by e.g. the ball was thrown.

Putting It All Together

So, a verb when used in a sentence has a person, a number, a tense, a mood and a voice. So, when discussing a verb when conjugated, I like to list all three. For example

Not all combinations are possible. Specifically, the moods have different numbers of tenses. The indicative mood has all six tenses; the subjunctive mood only has the present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect. The imperative mood has only the present and future.

And More?

There's also the non-finite forms. These forms show action, but they don't have a subject or tense. The non-finite forms are

Let's look at the purpose of each.

The infinitive is essentially the same as the English "to" form of a verb e.g. to eat. This is for use as nouns, indirect speech or talking about the action in the abstract. Unlike in English, each infinitive actually get's three forms - the present, the perfect and future.

The participle is a fusion between a verb and an adjective. They describe an action connected to a noun. Latin has these in the present active, perfect passive, future active and future passive forms. An English idea of this might be the crying baby kept everyone awake.

Gerunds are verbal nouns; they convey the act of doing. Think about verbs which end in -ing in English which act as nouns e.g. for the sake of loving. Now gerunds are very special because they are actually verbs not nouns, and so basically nothing discussed in this article so far applies to them, unfortunately. So, in short they decline, rather than conjugate. Don't worry too much about these for now, and I will produce a blog specifically on them at a later date.

Gerundives are also verbal nouns, which inidcate the idea of "must" or "ought to" e.g. he must be loved. Again, these are quite special and so we won't worry about them now and save it for later.

Finallt there's the supine, which is a weirdly specific and rare verb form. Again, this is a noun form and so declines rather than conjugates. There are basically two purposes. First, it can be used to express the purpose of motion e.g. he came to ask for money. Or, it can be used to describe in what respect something is true e.g. that story was incredible to hear. Again, don't stress about this one at all for now.

How to learn Verbs

My suggestion is to use Anki. I honestly can't imagine not using Anki to learn languages. I have three decks for Latin: words, sentences, and conjugations (and declensions but that's for nouns).

In the words deck I just have the first person present indicative active form of the verb i.e. the first form listed in the dictionary e.g. amō. I only go from Latin to English on this one.

Then the sentences deck has Latin sentences to English. Nothing fancy here, just for memorising sentences. Obviously you want a good mixture of different verbal forms in the sentences.

Finally, the conjugation deck. This one I give the verb in English in the infinitive form e.g. to run. I then list the mood, tense, person and number e.g. to run, present indicative active third person plural. This fully qualifies a single conjugation which is in Latin, and I also expect to list the conjugation of the verb i.e. first, second, third or fourth.

I tend to study verbs form by form. So, I would study the present indicative active first, then the imperfect indicative active next and so on. I would usually pick several verbs from each conjugation per form to place into Anki. It can take quite a while per form so expect this to be a lengthy process. The order I suggest in the list below is quite good since it will allow you to discuss things in a logical order. You'll be able to discuss the present, then the past, then the future and then move onto various other forms.

List of Verbs

The following is a list of all the verb forms. Again, as time goes on I will make each one a link to the relevant blog, so check back regularly. You can use this list to support your study, and check them off as they are completed

References

Collar, W. C., Daniell, M. G., Jenkins, T. (1918) Collar and Daniel's First Year Latin (Revised Ed.). Ginn and Company

Bullions, P. (1856) The Principles of Latin Grammar (62nd Ed.). Pratt, Woodford, Farmer & Brace

Wheelock, F. M. (2005) Wheelock's Latin 6th ed. HarperResource

Kidd, D. A., Wade, M (1997) Collins Latin Dictionary & Grammar. Harper Collins