The Partitive Genitive
Best Of The Genitives
If you’ve been doing Latin for a while, you’ll know that the genitive case is mostly used to show possession. But there's another type of genitive, the partitive genitive, and that's what I'm looking at today.
To really help you out with the genitive case, download my free noun endings guide here. It's got all the endings for nouns in the first, second, and third declension in all the cases, and it will really help you get to grips with the tables.
Understanding the Possessive Genitive Case
The genitive case is mostly used to denote possession. Let’s recap that quickly:
First Declension
“the girl's dog” - canis puellae
puellae is in the genitive case. It is her dog. She is the one who has possession. You can see she should be in the genitive case more easily if we use the longer “the dog of the girl”.
puellae - genitive singular
puellarum - genitive plural.
Second Declension
“the slave's money” - servi pecuniam
servi is the genitive here. The money is his. Again, elongate the sentence to see the genitive more clearly. “The money of the slave”.
servi - genitive singular
servorum - plural (of the slaves)
Third Declension
“the king's house” - villa regis.
regis is the genitive because the king has possession, it's the king's house. This is a third decension noun.
regis - singular
regum - plural
Partitives!
But there is another use for the genitive: the partitive genitive. This is sometimes called the genitive of the whole.
Often the positive genitive comes next to quantifiers. Things like numbers or pronouns that tell you how much of something we are talking about.
Common partitive phrases
pars terrae - “part of the land”
terrae is genitive. That is the whole thing. The “of the land” needs to be genitive because that's the what the quantifier “part” has come from. It's like if you say “a slice of cake”, the cake is the whole, the slice is just a bit of it.
aliqui eorum - “some of them”
This uses a pronoun, “some” aliqui and then “of them” is genitive - eorum.
unus canum - “one of the dogs”
This is with a number. So I've had a pronoun, I've had a quantifier. Now I have a number. canum is a third declension genitive singular. You have to be really careful with third declension, genitive because they look very accusative. But canum is genitive plural “of the dogs”. That's the whole group we're talking about. However, we've just picked out one of them: unus.
pessimus omnium - “worst of all”
You can sometimes have quantifiers that are superlatives. pessimus is the superlative, “worst”. omnium is the genitive of the whole, the partitive genitive.
passuum mille - “a thousand steps”
Again, the quantifier is a number, mille. Now this is quite a common phrase because it actually just means “a mile” - literally “1000 of the steps”. passuum is the genitive.
Remember, in Latin word order doesn't matter, so don't worry if the partitive genitive comes before the quantifier (above that’s the thousands). The important thing is that it is in the genitive case
Distinguishing Possession from Partitive
The key distinction is the role that genitive plays: possession addresses the owner of something, while partitive identifies a part extracted from a whole.
As always in Latin, you just have to use your common sense. Luckily, if you translate the genitive literally, a more fluent translation will usually pop out to you.
Empower Your Latin Learning
For all Latin enthusiasts eager to master genitive endings, you can download my free noun endings guide here. It spans first, second, and third declension nouns for all the cases.
Thanks for joining me on a journey through the Partitive Genitive, I hope it has been useful, and I will see you next time on bambasbat!