[B-Greek] The Latin verb ungues

Dewayne Dulaney dewayne.dulaney at gmail.com
Fri Oct 15 21:18:17 EDT 2010


Hi Michael,

You wrote,

>In Exodus 30:27, the Vulgate translates the
>Hebrew as et ungues ex eo tabernaculum testimonii
>et arcam testament which is translated into English
>as, "And you shall anoint the tabernacle of the
>congregation and the ark of the testimony with it."

>I''ve tried looking on Perseus to read up on the verb
>ungues, but to no avail. It says it is a noun having some
>sort of association with a "nail." Now, I'm sure that
>it does have that meaning in Latin, but my question is,
>why does Perseus only list that one meaning and say
>nothing about the meaning of "anoint."

>Is there another verb I should be searching for instead of
>"u-n-g-u-e-s"?

As a self-taught Latinist wannabee and sometime exploratory Latin
teacher, who is still learning his grammar, I feel your pain.

You have to use the 1st person, present active indicative form, in
this case "ungo/unguo", to find it on Perseus, at least in its Lewis
and Short Latin lexicon. I tried this a few minutes ago and it worked.

One good electronic help for finding such Latin verb forms is
Whitaker's WORDS, available both in an online edition and as a
download for desktop use from The Classics Technology Center at
http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/whitakerwords.html.

When I put your verb "ungues" into WORDS, it gave me the appropriate
definition, "anoint/rub", but also gave the forms unguo, unguere among
others. "Unguo" is the 1st pres. act. ind. form, and "ungere" is the
infinitve.

If you know the pres. act. ind. form of a verb, you can find other
forms using the online verb conjugator Verbix, which includes Latin
among the supported languages. You can access it at www.verbix.com.

Excelsior (Ever higher)!

Δεβένιος Δουλένιος-Devenius Dulenius-Dewayne Dulaney


-- 
"From the world you will have trouble. But, be brave! I have defeated
the world!"—John 16:33, DDV (Dewayne Dulaney Version)

My Bible blogs: http://my.opera.com/Loquor/blog/ and
http://hasopher.preachersfiles.com/



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