possum

Etymology
Derived from by apheresis.

Noun

 * 1)  An opossum, a marsupial of the family  of the Americas.
 * 2) Any of the marsupials in several families of the order  of Australia and neighboring islands.

Translations

 * Barngarla: birlda, wambala, bibara
 * Chinese:
 * Mandarin:
 * Finnish: harvaetuhampainen
 * French:
 * German:
 * Guugu Yimidhirr:
 * Hungarian: rókakuzu
 * Irish: pasam
 * Japanese: ポッサム
 * Kaurna: pirlta, wangku, mami, wirrapi
 * Kriol: posam
 * Ngarrindjeri: miluri
 * Nukunu: pirlta
 * Russian:
 * Spanish: pósum
 * Wardaman: dilygun

Verb

 * 1)  To play possum; to feign sleep, illness, or death.

Etymology
From, from +. Cognates include 🇨🇬 and 🇨🇬.

Verb

 * 1) be able to, can, may

Conjugation
This verb is irregular, but synchronously resembles prefixed with pot-. Several contractions and simplifications occur, however, namely: -ts- → -ss-, -tf- → -t-, -tess- → -ss- (note that does not originate from non-existent *fēns).

However, while this analysis works synchronically, diachronically, this relationship does not reflect a cognate historical relationship in all cases. For example, Osco-Umbrian forms confirm that a Proto-Italic verb 🇨🇬 (stem *pot-ē-) must also be reconstructed that, although lost in Latin otherwise, appears to have been the ultimate historical source of potuī and potēns.

In Vulgar Latin, the first person singular is changed to (causing the verb to be treated like a third conjugation verb (base poss-) in the present subjunctive (*possam, *possās)), while the third person plural (eī/eae/ea) possunt was preserved as such, though the rest of the verb became the second conjugation verb potēre ((tu) *potēs, (is/ea/id) *potet, (nōs) *potēmus and (vōs) *potētis), based on forms like potuī and potēns, just like velle (infinitive of ) was reformed to *volēre after forms like voluī and volēns.


 * Some passive forms are attested in pre-classical authors (e.g., , , ).