gnatus

Etymology
From, from , from. When used as a verb form, it functions as the perfect active participle of the deponent verb. The form must have previously also served as the perfect passive participle of the transitive verb, whose attested perfect passive participle  is a relatively recent replacement built by analogy to the stem of the perfect genuī. Continued association with the latter verb, and with other related words where initial /g/ was regularly retained due to a following vowel, such as, could be part of the reason a spelling with gn- was used for this word for some time after regular sound change had generally replaced initial *gn- in Latin with n-. Another influence on the spelling could have been the medial -gn- found in related prefixed words such,. Alternatively, Köhm 1905 suggests that the relatively frequent occurrence of the noun after a possessive pronoun could have caused gn to be retained just as it was in word-internal position.

Noun

 * , Sermones 2.5.30-31 (c. 35 BC, tr. H. Fairclough):
 * "la"
 * , Sermones 2.5.30-31 (c. 35 BC, tr. H. Fairclough):
 * "la"

- ... fama civem causaque priorem / sperne, domi si gnatus erit fecundave coniux.

Participle

 * 1) born
 * 2)  descended from, born to
 * 3)  aged (having the age of);  -old
 * 1)  descended from, born to
 * 2)  aged (having the age of);  -old
 * 1)  aged (having the age of);  -old
 * 1)  aged (having the age of);  -old

Usage notes
The noun ("son") is fairly consistently spelled with gn- in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, while the verbal participle ("born") is often spelled with n- already in these authors. In later authors such as Virgil, the use of the spelling gn- is a definite archaism.