LPH: Lesson - Grammar - The Supine

Image: a photograph of Earth from space. It is mirabile visu!The Supine

If an ancient Roman were to be shown a photo of the earth from space (and told what it was), they would likely exclaim: Mirabile visu! - It is incredible to see this!

While there are many other complex and interesting things to learn about Latin grammar, only this one small piece remains for this course and it is wonderful to report. You could even say that it is incredible to know this form: the supine. The reason this has been put off for such a great length of time is that it is relatively difficult to describe a supine and the uses are limited to a few specialized instances, which we will highlight below. The supine itself is a verbal noun, which makes it similar to the infinitive or gerund, but it is highly restricted in use. It has no defined tense or person, and while generally considered a passive form, is not explicit in its voice. Certain Latin dictionaries prefer to use the accusative supine as a 4th Principal Part instead of the Perfect Participle that we use in this course. So, for instance, some dictionaries would list the verb amare as:

  • amo, amare, amavi, amatum - to love

That form, amatum, is the supine.

Formation of the Supine

The supine only has two forms: accusative, ending in -um and dative/ablative, ending in -u. We add these endings to the participle stem of the verb, so use the 4th PP to form the supine:

  • amo, amare, amavi, amatus - to love
    • Participle stem: amatus - us = amat-
      • Accusative Supine: amat + um = amatum
      • Dative/Ablative Supine: amat + u = amatu

Though most verbs can form the supine, not all verb will actually use both supine forms, with only a select few verbs using the dative/ablative form.