Proverbs/Grammar ~ Grammar/Proverbs: Latin Lesson #175: Deponent Verbs

I hope everyone has had a good holiday break... and that you're ready for some more Latin in 2026. The focus for today's lesson is something new and something very distinctively Latin: the "deponent" verbs. These are verbs that have only passive forms; they do not have active forms.

So, for example, the active verb amat, "loves," has a passive form, amatur, "is loved," a deponent verb like loquitur, "speaks," has no active form. The meaning is active in English, but the verb form is passive, ending in -tur like the passive verbs you have been studying for the past few weeks. These deponent verbs get their name because they have put-aside (de-ponent) their active forms, leaving only the passive forms.

There are many common deponent verbs in Latin, and one of the most common is loquitur, "speaks." All the proverbs for today feature the word loquitur. You can see the Latin root of this word in English words like "loquacious" and "eloquent."

And here is the slideshow (with cats) of the words you have seen before:

And here are today's proverbs:

1. Res ipsa loquitur.
(The) thing itself speaks.
res ipsa LO-quitur.

You have not seen the word ipsa, "itself," in the feminine form before, but you have seen the masculine form: ipse.

Compare the English saying, "The thing speaks for itself." The Latin is used in legal language; find out more at Wikipedia: Res ispa loquitur.

2. Aliter loquitur, aliter sentit.
(Someone) speaks one-way (and) thinks another-way.
A-liter LO-quitur, A-liter sentit.

You have not seen the adverb aliter, "otherwise, differently," but you have seen the adjective that it comes from: alius.

As you have seen before, Latin sometimes repeats a word twice when English uses two different words, as aliter...aliter... "differently... differently..." is equivalent to English, "one way... another way..."

The verb sentit means both "think" and "feel" in Latin. You can see this root in the English words like "sense" and "sentiment."

You can see a 17th-century emblem for this saying here.

3. Hirundo aestatem loquitur.
(A) swallow announces summer.
hir-UN-do aes-TA-tem LO-quitur.

You already know all the words in this saying, and you've seen a saying that has a very similar meaning: Aestatis hirundo est nuntia.

Notice that aestatem here is in the accusative case; it is the object of loquitur, which is why I have translated the verb here as "announces," so that it can take an object. You will see many deponent verbs that take objects! So, while they might look like passive verbs, they are not passive, and they can take objects, just as active verbs do.

4. Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur.
(The) mouth speaks from (the) abundance of-the-heart.
ex abun-DAN-tia cordis os LO-quitur.

You have not seen the noun abundantia, "abundance," before, but you have seen a related adjective: abundant. The root of the Latin word is unda, "wave," so the idea is that abundance is something that "overflows."

This saying comes from the Bible; it appears in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew.

Unlike the saying above, Aliter loquitur, aliter sentit, this saying claims that whatever a person feels in their heart or thinks in their mind overflows into their mouth such that it is heard in their words.

5. Sine lingua et voce loquitur somnium.
(A) dream speaks without tongue and voice.
sine lingua et voce LO-quitur SOM-nium.

You also know all the words in this saying! It is adapted from one of the riddles of Alcuin. Here is how that riddle is posed and answered in the Dialogue between Alcuin and Pippin:

A. Some unknown person spoke with me without tongue and voice, one who never was before, nor shall be again, and whom I was not used to hearing, and did not know.

P. Perhaps a dream disturbed you, master?

You can see the Latin and English texts of all the riddles online.

Here's a recap: