X-Message-Number: 17173 Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 21:05:42 -0500 (CDT) From: Eivind Berge <> Subject: Re: Avoiding death in Latin Kennita Watson: > I came up with "evite mortem" as a back-construction from > "carpe diem"; Is it "evita" because the verbs are different > conjugations? Yes, "evito" is first conjugation but "carpo" is third (principal parts: carpo, carpere, carpsi, carptum), and here the stem vowel is -e-, not -a-. By the way, in this conjugation there are four exceptions to the rule that the imperative is identical to the present stem (found by dropping -re from the second principal part). In these verbs the stem vowel is missing from the singular present imperative: dic, duc, fac, and fer (from dico, duco, facio, and fero). The plural imperative is what you would expect. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17173