AureliaeLacrimae Posted December 1, 2014 Report Share Posted December 1, 2014 Colours in Latin Well, now that I've done a section on adjectives, I wish to add colours as well. As in any other language, colours in Latin can be very useful and good for practice. Colours are adjectives, so they act like them - they follow the pattern of bonus, bona, bonum explained in the previous post. Here is a list of Latin colours: flavus, flava, flavum - blue albus, alba, album - white aureus, aurea, aureum - golden purpureus, purpurea, purpureum - purple caeruleus, caerulea, caeruleum - sky-blue roseus, rosea, roseum - rose There are some which follow the pattern of miser, misera, miserum: niger, nigra, nigrum - black ater, atra, atrum - dark ruber, rubra, rubrum Enjoy playing with colours! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linguaholic Posted December 1, 2014 Report Share Posted December 1, 2014 That's interesting. I just noticed that Albus stands for White. I am sure J.K Rowling had this in mind when she made up that name Albus Dumbledore! Now it makes sense to me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AureliaeLacrimae Posted December 1, 2014 Author Report Share Posted December 1, 2014 Well, now that we're discussing it, Minerva is the goddess of wisdom, Severus means stern. Alastor was Greek god of revenge, Cornelius means horn-coloured, Draco is dragon, Lucius is light-bringer (just like Lucifer), Luna is moon and Lupin comes from lupus, i, m. Oh, and Nimbus means rain, as far as I recall, so you'll see - Harry Potter is full of Latin words. I won't even start naming the spells. Their origins are mostly Latin - I'd never finish. J.K.Rowling was very careful in her selection of names, it seems. I've also heard that Dumbledore is Old English for bumblebee. But I am not sure about this one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linguaholic Posted December 2, 2014 Report Share Posted December 2, 2014 Thank you for the info Aurelia! I knew that J.K Rowling made up some of the expressions with the help of Latin. However, I did not know that she was that crazy about it :grin: The latin foundation of those words/expressions make them sound really special/unique! Absolutely brilliant! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AureliaeLacrimae Posted December 3, 2014 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2014 I must admit that this was one of the reasons why I'd started learning Latin - more seriously, I mean. I was simply amazed. All of these names... they meant something. By knowing someone's name, you could know their basic character. And the spells... well, the spells were something special. I used to leaf through the dictionary for hours, trying to find the equivalents. Nox is an easy one. But what about Vipera evanesca? It isn't even entirely correct. I know how frustrated I was about this one, simply because I knew that evanesco, evanescere, evanui can't possibly have a form in ablative similar to that one: it would either evanescente in present, so the ''vanishing serpent'' or nothing at all. I was thinking about this one for a very long time. You brought some very sweet memories back... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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