What are Deponent Verbs?

January Latin Challenge: Day 22 of 31

What are deponent verbs?

Deponent verbs are active verbs in disguise. They are essentially verbs that look passive in form, but are active in meaning. This means they follow the passive endings for each tense, but they are translated actively. There aren’t very many of them, but they are important as they often trip people up in exams and translations. 

Let’s look at an example: hortor. Here are the principal parts:

hortor, hortari, hortatus sum - I encourage

This shows me that the verb is only found in the passive form, as the first principal part (hortor) would usually be a present active. However, from the translation I can tell that it is translated actively, so must be a deponent verb.

Because it is deponent, it only has 3 principal parts, rather than the usual 4. This is because the 3rd principal part, the perfect 1st person, uses the perfect passive participle and the verb to be - this is the way passive perfect tenses are formed. This means we already have the perfect passive participle in the list, and don’t need it again separately. 

Common Examples

• hortor, hortari, hortatus sum - to encourage

• ingredior, ingredi, ingressus sum - to enter 

• loquor, loqui, locutus sum - to speak

• miror, mirari, miratus sum - to admire, wonder

• regredior, regredi, regressus sum - to return

• sequor, sequi, secutus sum - to follow

• utor, uti, usus sum - to use

• vereor, vereri, veritus sum - to fear

Let’s look at some examples in Latin. If you need a reminder of the passive endings then go and download my Complete Reference Guide to Latin Verbs - it has all the endings of every tense, mood and voice in Latin. It will really help you with this next exercise. 

Remember: these verbs look passive but are translated as active. 

If you want to have a go at these on your own, don’t read on until you are ready to see the explanations.

1. puella statuam miratur.

2. viri de victoria locuti sunt.

3. nos Romani semper consulos sequemur.

4. ianuam villae utebaris.

5. cras ad urbem regressa ero.

Read on when you want the explanations

1. puella statuam miratur.

   “The girl wonders at the statue”.

   The deponent here is in the present tense, and it is 3rd person singular. The girl is the nominative, and the statue is accusative. 

2. viri de victoria locuti sunt.

   The deponent here, locuti sunt, is in the perfect tense. The men are the nominative (hence the plural locuti and the use of sunt).

   “The men spoke about the victory”. 

3. nos Romani semper conulos sequemur.

   The deponent looks present here, but it is actually future - its a 3rd conjugation verb so uses the -e- rule for future, not -bor, -beris, -bitur. It’s a 1st person plural, and nos Romani agrees with this.

   “We Romans will always follow the consuls”. 

4. ianuam villae utebaris.

   Utebaris is a 2nd singular imperfect tense, again a deponent - so it looks passive but we translate it as active.

   “You were using the door of the house”. 

5. cras ad urbem regressa ero.

   The deponent here is formed from the perfect stem and the verb “to be” in the future tense - this makes it a future perfect.

   “I will have returned to the city tomorrow”.

    

And that’s deponent verbs! I hope this post has been useful to you! The most important thing to remember is that they look passive, but they are really active in meaning. They’re the sneaky ones.

Look out for my post tomorrow about even sneakier verbs - semi deponents - which will be Day 23 of the January Latin Challenge - subscribe to get that sent straight to your inbox on January 23rd, 2024!