Talk:-ium

-ium
I am continuing to find well-meaning but wrong entries for Latin "suffixes". I'd like some input on how to revise this entry. The first definition is incorrect, in that it implies "-ium" is a formative suffix used to form nouns. However, the first example goven for this (auditor - auditorium) is clearly incorrect. The correct sequence is that the noun auditor: became an adjective auditorius:, whose neuter singular nominative has the inflectional ending "-ium". It is rather common for the neuter singular of adjectives to take a substantive (noun) sense. So "-ium" is not a formative suffix in this situation. I cannot tell whether the other example (castellum - castilium) is valid, since "castilium" does not appear in my Latin dictionaries (for either Classical or medieval Latin).

The second definition, for forming chemical elements in New Latin would need support. By the time these new elements were being named, Latin was no longer the international language of scientific communication. I am not sure that the "-ium" element names are actually New Latin at all, since those names aren't used in the languages I'm familiar with (e.g. the Spanish name for osmium is osmio).

So, what do people recommend doing with the entry? --EncycloPetey 04:51, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * If there's an ISO code for dog Latin, this would probably qualify. :-) Otherwise I'm not sure what to do with "suffixes used in some modern languages to make up Latin-looking words."  The chemical sense could perhaps be Translingual, though as you note it is not used in many languages. -- Visviva 05:07, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, to begin with, it seems like this suffix could be considered a combination of -i- and -um, with -um being a second declension neuter (nominative, accusative, and vocative, right?) stem, and.....I'm somewhat confused about what -i- means, but I suspect it is similar to what's currently presented in the entry. Otherwise, it could simply be considered the neuter form of -ius, meriting only an inflected form entry.  Note that I'm only talking about Latin, not English.  I suggest that someone (someone being an utterly unambiguous reference to EP :-)) write good entries for -ius and -um, and see where that takes us.  The English seems ok to me.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * What part of speech is an inflectional ending? Generally, we haven't ever included inflectional endings as their own entries, unless it was a formative suffix.  In Latin, the -us would indicate (usually) masculine nominative and second declension, but is not tied to one part of speech.  It can show up in nouns, numerals, adjectives, and participles, but there are several verb forms that end in -(am)us, -(em)us, or -(im)us.  The comparative of many adverbs ends in -ius.  In short, there isn't anything useful or specific that could be said in an entry about the ending.  The ending appears in every major part of speech and it is only part of an inflectional pattern in each (except adverbs, which technically do not inflect).  --EncycloPetey 22:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

moved to RFD -- Prince Kassad 18:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

-ium
Latin section (not English), taken from rfc. EP thinks these are not formative suffixes in Latin. -- Prince Kassad 18:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * If it's not proper Latin, then I agree, it should not be in the "Latin" section. But let's not delete the content, let's move it to "English". So, I don't think this should be a deletion request, it's more of a reorganization. And one that a proper authority should just go ahead and do. PatrickFisher 18:41, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Please leave here as many users will look here.

Although I'm not sure if it's productive, there are plenty of nouns formed this way. e.g., artificium (< artifex), auspicium (< auspex), arbitrium (< arbiter), etc. These are all of the form + ium →, but that might not be the only thing -ium is used for. My Latin isn't amazing, so I could be missing something obvious about this, but it seems to me it should be kept under Latin, maybe with the note that it isn't productive (unless it is - I don't know). 124.169.231.62 03:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The New Latin sense should clearly be kept. I added a note that the other sense "May no longer be productive", but have otherwise kept it. (It's found on loads of words!) - -sche (discuss) 18:57, 3 February 2012 (UTC)