Latin Nerds? Anyone?

[nonionay]

If I were to use the term "perfruorii" to label a group of people, would I be grammatically correct?
I poked through a Latin dictionary and found "perfruor," which meant "enjoy to the full" and I want to use that in my Nano novel to label a group of undead nasties who let the vessels of their soul be filled with the power of hell.

Comments

[domestikate.livejournal.com]

i used to be a latin nerd. let's see if i still am.

Perfruor is a deponent verb-- a verb with passive endings but essentially active meanings. Let's say "enjoy to the full." (enjoy thoroughly, maybe?)
Perfruor=I enjoy to the full
Perfui=to enjoy to the full
Perfructus=I enjoyed/ I did enjoy to the full

Latin is an inflected language, (i'm not trying to be too pedantic, i swear) so endings are everything. They're also, despite what it might seem, not arbitrary.

As for "perfruorii"-- If you want to use it to describe a group of people, you want it to mean, what, The Enjoyers-to-the-full? I don't know what that would be.

"they enjoy to the full" would be perfruuntur (i think), or "we enjoy to the full" would be perfruimur" but i don't know how to make that into a group name. i could look it up-- i'm kind of enjoying this review.

in the meantime, for good-sounding fake latin, i'd suggest maybe something like Perfruorati?

[criada.livejournal.com]

Please, be pedantic! I like Perfruorati, you have to purr in order to say it. >:)
Thanks.

[kaerfel.livejournal.com]

Hey--you met me at the Nano meeting (I'm the one with the Latin comic).

I am a Latin nerd (and a reluctant Greek nerd -_-).

Anyway. **Puts on smart, professor-looking glasses**

Perfruentes would be the participle form, if you want something like "those enjoying to the full" or "thoroughly enjoying", and the singular would be perfruens, if you ever need it.

A cool program you can download is Latin Words. Even if you don't know Latin, it's handy to see if the word you're trying to make exists.

[(Anonymous)]

Cool, thanks!
What would the singular be? Perfruente?

[kaerfel.livejournal.com]

The singular would be "perfruens."

Perfruente would be the ablative case, so kind of like the english equivalent of adding any of the prepositions by, with, or from. So "by means of someone enjoying to the full," "with someone enjoying to the full," or "from someone enjoying to the full." I don't know how much sense that makes with no context.

Oh, and the stress would be different for each one. So per-fru-EN-tes and PER-fru-ens.

[kaerfel.livejournal.com]

Okay, so you could also use "perfructi," but what I said earlier was wrong, because it wouldn't be "having been enjoyed," since perfrui is deponent, so it can only have active meanings.

So, you've got either "perfructi," which means something like "those who have enjoyed," (or perfructae if they're all girls) or "perfruentes," meaning "those thoroughly enjoying."

So I guess you might want to go with the fake-Latin "Perfruorati" instead, since it sounds coolest. ^_^