Latin Grammar Mini-Series | Lesson 19 - The Fourth Declension

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Lesson 20: Fourth Declension 

There is one important rule to remember here: 

(1) Fourth declension contains u-stem nouns which are almost all masculine in gender.  

Fourth declension is Latin's u-stem declension in which almost all the nouns are masculine in gender. Ironically, the one major exception is probably the most commonly used fourth-declension noun, manus, manūs, f., meaning “hand.” 

This declension is unique to Latin. Among Indo-European languages, there really isn't anything exactly like it. Seen from the long view linguistically, it was a short-lived attempt by the Romans to create a distinctive u-stem declension, and the experiment didn't turn out well. By historical standards, fourth declension didn't last long. As early as the fourth century CE, fourth-declension forms were beginning to be subsumed into second declension, and by the end of the classical age the declension had begun to disappear altogether. 

Unfortunately, even though it wasn’t used all that much within the classical age, it was still a fully active form, so you have to know it (I know…)Here are the endings for fourth declension: 

-us -ūs,

-ūs -uum

-ui -ibus

-um -ūs 

-u -ibus 

Notice how you can’t escape the strong presence of -u-. It dominates eight of the ten forms, producing what has to be the most distinctive genitive plural ending in Latin: -uum. 

But if you think of memorizing the fourth declension endings with the formula: the base ending in -u-, plus the third declension endings added on. Looking at it that way can save you some time memorizing endings. 

Fourth declension also includes a few neuter nouns. Here are the endings:

-u -ua

-us -uum

-u -ibus

-u -ua

-u -ibus. 

And here's a fourth declension neuter noun fully declined: 

cornu cornua

cornūs cornuum

cornu cornibus

cornu cornua

cornu cornibus 

Note: there are no mandatory long marks here. 

The Ablative of Separation

The term “ablative” denotes “separation” in Latin: ab- means “from”; -lat- means “carry, go.” Thus, the original use of the ablative was to indicate where something came from. Other uses like means and objects of prepositions developed later. In other words, the ablative of separation shows the oldest, the original, use of the ablative. The ablative of separation naturally occurs with verbs that have a built-in sense of separation, like the verb careo which means “lack,” for example, pecuniā careo, “I lack money,” literally “I am separate from money.” Notice the lack of any preposition in this construction. So when a word in the ablative has no preposition and its meaning denotes that two things are apart from each other ─ for instance, “me” and “money” ─ then that use of the ablative is called “the ablative of separation.”