RobMdza Wrote:Sure I agree, but since I've been translating Horatium and Plauto lately, the meanings that came to my mind while looking up for them in the dictionary were those. But, despite the examples which were really good for simple sentences, I would like to add the dictionary itself quotes: magno aestimare 'to estimate the most' or chopping the root of the word (magn-) and comparing it to nouns and verbs like magnitudo, -inis; magnificentia, -ae; magnifico [1, tr.]
And I put summa, -ae, the noun, instead of the adjective since the noun had more possible translations. (It never came to my mind that anyone here studied Latin too).
Oh, btw, in the second sentence (Pompilius navem..) it's better, or at least I prefer, to use the comparative form of the adjective instead of the subordination cuz the sentence ends up being shorter and easier to read
Oh true. I guess that should be Pompilius navem maior quam quo Lucii aedificavit? Unfortunately magnus is irregular so a comparative wouldn't have worked anyway. I was trying to think of an example that used magnam that in English would have illustrated the literalness of the magnam. How about "Portia is a tall girl, but Caecilius is still taller"? (Portia puella magna est, Caecilius etiam maior)
EDIT: oops, classic mistake - put enim instead of etiam. - doesn't change the example though
This is a very stimulating topic
Hope you don't mind if I explore that very interesting phrase "magno aestimare" - this is an interesting example you've raised. Isn't that Latin idiom for "value"? As in, "I value your friendship" (amicitiam tuam magno aestimo). I must admit that I've never heard it translated as "estimate the most" - that seems rather too literal to me, but perhaps you can illuminate some more. I can't think of an author offhand sorry. If it is idiom, perhaps we shouldn't take its meaning as a blueprint for defining magnus/a/um alone?Regarding looking up the compound derivations of magnus/a/um - forgive me but perhaps this is not the most accurate way to determine the exact meaning of the original word? After all, in English, the word "range" is an element of "rangehood" but you could not define its very diverse meaning (expressing different varieties of "extent") just from looking at "rangehood" "driving range" and "ranger."
Similarly in Latin, if you were trying to define "facio, -ere, -eci, -actum" (make, cause) and just looking at compounds like:
- pontifex, -icis (pons+feci "bridge maker") - literally, "priest"
- magnifico, -ere (magnus+ficio "make great") - not sure what the def. is, but I'm sure you do (:
- interficio, -ere (inter+ficio "between make") - literally, "kill"
- adficio, -ere (ad+ficio "to/at make") - literally "affect" (verb)
As you can see, you might be quite hard pressed to get the entire range of meaning of facio just from looking at "priest", "affect" and "kill".
However I suspect we both agree that magnus can have more than merely metaphoric meaning
Some dictionaries would say it has primarily physical meaning, and secondarily metaphorical (different to the English definition of "great"), but that is another discussion for another thread. In MS, certainly, both understandings can apply meaningfully.Horatium - do you mean Horace? If you are, I loved Horace, I wish I could study him again!