Latin Adjectives for Masculine 1st Declension Nouns

This is a side note to First and Second Declension Adjectives

• In Latin, nouns and adjectives must agree in gender, number, and case.
• Most, but not all nouns of the first declension are feminine. Common feminine first declension nouns include:
  • puella 'girl'
  • femina 'woman'
  • silva 'forest'
  • patria 'fatherland'
  All these would require feminine adjectives.
  • parva pulella 'small girl'
  • femina bona 'good woman'
    NB an adjective can precede or follow the noun in Latin because the meaning doesn't depend on position in the sentence.
  • pulchrae silvae 'beautiful forests'
  • mea patria 'my fatherland'

  An -A Ending Doesn't Mean a Noun is Feminine

  
  Masculine first declension nouns require masculine adjectives. While today an agricola (farmer) may be feminine, in antiquity, a farmer, sailor, or pirate was assumed to be masculine, and so the first declension nouns that correspond with these English words are also masculine:
  • agricola
  • nauta
  • pirata
  In order to modify the masculine agricola, nauta, or pirata, there must be masculine endings on the adjectives.
  The good farmers would be:
  agricolae boni
  The great sailor would be:
  nauta magnus
  
  In the familiar phrase: "Carthago delenda est," Carthago 'Carthage' is a feminine (3rd declension) noun and so is modified by a feminine form of the passive periphrastic -- which includes an adjective (delenda) and a form of the verb to be (est).
  Were we to translate "the pirate must be destroyed" into Latin, we could do it using the passive periphrastic in this way:

  pirata delendus est.

  We would probably want to say "pirates must be destroyed," in which case, we would need, not only a change of gender (delenda to delendus), but a change in number (singular to plural):

  piratae delendi sunt

  More on Latin Adjectives

  Parts of Speech

  • Latin Case - Ablatives
  • Latin Case - Nominative
  • Latin Case - Vocative
  • Latin Cases - The 7 Cases of Latin Nouns, Pronouns, and Adjectives
  • Latin Declension Rules
  • Latin Noun Suffixes - List of Noun Suffixes in Latin
  • Latin Nouns of the 1st Declension - Endings
  • Latin Nouns of the 2nd Declension - Endings
  • Latin Nouns of the 3rd Declension - Endings
  • Latin Nouns of the 4th Declension - Endings
  • Latin Nouns of the 5th Declension - Endings
  • Latin Adjectives 1st and 2nd Declension
  • Latin Adjectives for Masculine 1st Declension Nouns
  • Endings on Latin Adjectives for the Comparative
  • Latin Personal Pronouns
  • Latin Demonstrative Pronouns
  • Latin Intensive Pronoun Ipse
  • Latin Interjections - List of Common Interjections in Latin
  • Latin Conjunctions
  • Latin Conjunctions - List of Conjunctions in Latin
  • Prepositions With the Ablative - Latin Prepositions
  More Ancient / Classical History Quick Tips