-um
English
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /əm/
- Rhymes: -əm
Etymology 1
From the homographic case endings of the nominative, accusative, and vocative forms of numerous neuter Latin second declension nouns.
Suffix
-um (plural -a)
- Denotes singular grammatical number.
- (chemistry) Forms the ends of the names of certain elements (such as molybdenum and platinum).
Usage notes
- The vast majority of words which feature this suffix also have standard -ums plurals formed by suffixation with the -s plural suffix. However, in such situations, the -s suffix morphologically is additional to and separate from the -um suffix.
Derived terms
- criterium
- datum
- decennium
- delirium
- desideratum
- erratum (cf. German Irrtum)
- fatum
- forum
- gymnasium
- honorarium
- imperium
- interbellum (between war(s))
- labarum
- lucidum
- mandatum
- maximum
- medium
- minimum
- millennium
- modicum
- mortuarium
- museum
- opium
- optimum
- Persarum
- pessarium
- podium
- postbellum (after war)
- referendum
- sanatorium
- solarium
- stadium
- talcum (any shiny mineral)
- tedium
- ultimatum
- unicum
- vacuum
- Valium
Translations
Etymology 2
Possibly from 'em.
Suffix
-um
- Denotes transitive verbs in the trade pidgins used between English-speakers and indigenous populations; used derogatorily by extension in English by addition to any verb, transitive or not.
- 1871, Mrs. Edward Millett, An Australian parsonage; or, The settler and the savage in Western Australia, page 129:
- Having finished her return of deaths, she went on to say "Black fellow sick—white lady fowl sendum—white lady kangaroo sendum—master all self eatum—" but here she paused and made an exception in favour of the matron, expressed by the words " Missis not eatum—missis good fellow."
- 1896, F J Stimsom, King Noanett: A Story of Old Virginia and the Massachusetts Bay, page 254:
- "Givum dinner; smokum pipe," was all that we could get out of Quatchett.
Derived terms
(any sense):
Bislama
Usage notes
The suffix to be used is determined by vowel harmony. If the last vowel in the stem is u, then the suffix is -um. Otherwise, use -em or -im.
Dutch
Usage notes
- Both the plural forms of -a and -ums are used in everyday language, but the latter is sometimes proscribed against.
See also
German
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ʊm/
Etymology 2
As a variant of -heim through reduction to [əm] and subsequent backing. Compare -em. This is the only origin in most areas, but along the North Sea coast, where the suffix is most frequent, it sometimes goes back to Old Frisian -em, -um (dative plural ending), equivalent to German -en as in -hausen. Distinguishing both origins is often impossible, however.
Derived terms
- Accum
- Ackerum
- Adlum
- Ahlum
- Alkersum
- Ammersum
- Amrum
- Ankum
- Archsum
- Arnum
- Atzum
- Austum
- Baccum
- Bachum
- Bakum
- Balkum
- Baltrum
- Bargum
- Barum
- Bassum
- Beckum
- Beinum
- Bekum
- Berkum
- Berum
- Bettrum
- Bingum
- Blersum
- Bochum
- Boldixum
- Bolzum
- Bondelum
- Bordelum
- Borgsum
- Borkum
- Bornum
- Börßum
- Borsum
- Breinum
- Breklum
- Brinkum
- Brockum
- Bültum
- Büsum
- Canum
- Carum
- Critzum
- Dahlum
- Dalum
- Damsum
- Dersum
- Dettum
- Ditzum
- Dornum
- Dötzum
- Dratum
- Dunsum
- Dunum
- Eckum
- Eickum
- Eilsum
- Eilum
- Einum
- Eitzum
- Esklum
- Filsum
- Flechum
- Freepsum
- Fulkum
- Garbolzum
- Grimersum
- Gyhum
- Harsum
- Harum
- Hassum
- Hatzum
- Heersum
- Heinum
- Heissum
- Herbrum
- Herßum
- Heyersum
- Hilmarsum
- Holsthum
- Holtum
- Holum
- Hommersum
- Hönnersum
- Hörnum
- Horum
- Hötzum
- Hüddessum
- Husum
- Itzum
- Jarssum
- Jemgum
- Kalkum
- Karlum
- Kehrum
- Keitum
- Kirchborgum
- Klintum
- Kökelsum
- Kölsum
- Krukum
- Kuckum
- Landersum
- Latum
- Leversum
- Loccum
- Logabirum
- Loikum
- Loppersum
- Luttrum
- Lutum
- Machtsum
- Mahlum
- Matrum
- Mehrum
- Mesum
- Midlum
- Morsum
- Muckum
- Mundersum
- Mussum
- Nieblum
- Oberhelsum
- Ochtersum
- Ochtum
- Oedelum
- Oevenum
- Ohlum
- Ohrum
- Oldsum
- Oppum
- Östrum
- Pelkum
- Petkum
- Pogum
- Polsum
- Rantum
- Reckelsum
- Reckum
- Reeßum
- Risum
- Roklum
- Rorichum
- Röttum
- Rötzum
- Rysum
- Siegelsum
- Sillium
- Sorsum
- Sottrum
- Stadum
- Stedum
- Stockum
- Struckum
- Styrum
- Süderlügum
- Sussum
- Sustrum
- Sutrum
- Tetekum
- Thunum
- Tinnum
- Toftum
- Twixlum
- Utersum
- Uttum
- Vahnum
- Vanikum
- Vernum
- Vinnum
- Vöhrum
- Vossum
- Wachtum
- Walchum
- Walsum
- Wankum
- Watzum
- Wätzum
- Wehrum
- Werdum
- Wessum
- Westrum
- Westum
- Winkum
- Wirdum
- Witsum
- Wrixum
- Wybelsum
Hungarian
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [um]
Suffix
-um
See also
- Appendix:Hungarian suffixes
References
- Attila Mártonfi: The System of the Hungarian Suffixes, Theses of PhD Dissertation, Budapest, 2006
Icelandic
Suffix
-um
- Used to form the dative plural of most nouns, all strong adjectives and most pronouns.
- Used to form the first person plural of verbs in the indicative and subjunctive, past and present.
- telja (infinitive) → við teljum (we count or believe) (indicative)
- við teldum subjunctive past tense, i.e., we would believe
- Used to form some adverbs from nouns or adjectives — it is actually a frozen dative
Latin
Pronunciation
- (Classical) IPA(key): /um/, [ʊ̃ˑ]
- (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): /um/, [um]
Etymology 1
From Proto-Italic *-om, from Proto-Indo-European *-om (thematic masculine singular accusative and neuter singular nominative and accusative ending).
Alternative forms
- -om (conditioned variant used after -v-, -qu-, -gu-, -u- up through the middle of the first century AD)
Suffix
-um
- inflection of -us:
- accusative masculine singular
- nominative/accusative/vocative neuter singular
Etymology 2
From Proto-Italic *-om, from Proto-Indo-European *-oHom (genitive plural ending).
Alternative forms
Usage notes
Latin genitive plural forms take the ending -um either by itself, or with additional preceding material (generally determined by the word's conjugation class). First and second declension nouns and adjectives usually have genitive plural forms ending in -ārum and -ōrum, but some words can take the short ending -um (without preceding -ār-/-ōr-) instead: this is common with words denoting weights, measures and monetary value and with distributive numerals.[1][2]
- In the second declension, the genitive plural in -um can be found:
- In the first declension, the genitive plural in -um can be found:
In New Latin texts (i.e. from the Renaissance onwards), the genitive plural suffix -um was formerly often spelled with an accent as -ûm (or -ôm after V/U) when it appears instead of -ārum or -ōrum in words of the first or second declension such as amphorûm and deûm.
This circumflexed spelling -ûm was motivated at least in part by reinterpretation of the ending as a contraction of -ōrum/-ārum. Because contraction generally produces a long vowel in Latin, this reanalysis resulted in an incorrect assumption that the vowel in the final syllable of genitive plural amphorum and deum was long by nature, and so distinguished in length from the naturally short vowel in the final syllable of the accusative singular form deum. Thus, the contraction hypothesis enabled second-declension genitive plural forms and accusative singular forms that would otherwise be spelled the same to be differentiated in a way that was imagined to correspond to a distinction in the natural length of the vowel. Compare the use of the circumflex in New Latin to distinguish the ablative ending -â (with long ā) from the nominative/vocative ending -a (with short ă) in first declension singular nouns, or to mark third-person plural perfect forms ending in -ēre, which was interpreted as a "contracted" form of the alternative ending -ērunt (e.g. fuêre, taken to be a contraction of fuerent[3]).
The contraction hypothesis also caused these genitive forms to be spelled with -ūm (or -ōm after V/U) in some older works by modern scholars that use macrons to mark long vowels, such as Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary. However, the hypothesis of contraction and the corresponding assumption of a difference in vowel length is outdated: according to modern etymological understanding, all Latin words ending in -um, regardless of their case, number or declension, were pronounced in Classical Latin with a short vowel in the final syllable.[4][5]
Third declension words that have genitive plurals ending in -um as an alternative to -ium have also been spelled with -ûm, again with the justification that the shorter ending is interpreted as being a contraction of the longer variant.[6] Examples are coelestûm and caedûm used as spellings of the short genitive plurals of coelestis and caedes (compared to the long forms coelestium and caedium).[7]
Aside from the contraction hypothesis, the use of the circumflexed spelling -ûm may additionally have been influenced by the use of the circumflex in the spelling of Greek genitive plural forms ending in -ῶν.[8]
References
- Roby, Henry John. A Grammar of the Latin Language from Plautus to Suetonius, Volume 1, (1872), page 124
- Zumpt, Karl Gottlob. A Grammar of the Latin Language, Fourth Edition, translated by John Kenrick (1836), page 10
- Donaldson, John William (1860) Varronianus: A Critical and Historical Introduction to the Ethnography of Ancient Italy and to the Philological Study of the Latin Language, 3rd edition, page 303
- Charles E. Bennett (1907) “Hidden Quantity”, in The Latin Language – a historical outline of its sounds, inflections, and syntax, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, pages 46-48
- Piet Steenbakkers, Spinoza's Ethica from Manuscript to Print: Studies on text, form and related topics, 1994, page 78
- Carey, John (1821) A Clue for Young Latinists, and Non-Latinists, to trace the original forms and signification of nouns and verbs, from their terminations, alphabetically arranged, with explanatory references to the grammar, London, page 63
- Walker, William. Some improvements to the art of teaching, especially in the first grounding of a young scholar in grammar learning. Shewing a short, sure, and easie way to bring a scholar to variety and elegancy in writing Latine. Written for the help and ease of all ushers of schools, and country school-masters, and for the use and profit of all younger scholars. 2nd ed. with many additions. 1676.
- Mindaugas Strockis (2007) Klasikinių kalbų kirčio žymėjimo įtaka lietuvių kirčio žymėjimui (PhD dissertation) (in Lithuanian), Vilnius
Old Irish
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /um/
Derived terms
See also
See Appendix:Old Irish affixed pronouns for details on how these forms are used.
Note that the so-called “infixed” pronouns are technically prefixes, but they are never the first prefix in a verbal complex.
Person | Infixed | Suffixed | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Class A | Class B | Class C | ||
1 sing. | m-L | dom-L, dam-L | -um | |
2 sing. | t-L | dot-L, dat-L, dut-L, dit-L | -ut | |
3 sing. m. | a-N, e-N | d-N | id-N, did-N, d-N | -i, -it |
3 sing. f. | s-(N) | da- | -us | |
3 sing. n. | a-L, e-L | d-L | id-L, did-L, d-L | -i, -it |
1 pl. | n- | don-, dun-, dan- | -unn | |
2 pl. | b- | dob-, dub-, dab- | -uib | |
3 pl. | s-(N) | da- | -us | |
L means this form triggers lenition. N means this form triggers nasalization (eclipsis) (N) means this form triggers nasalization in some texts but not in others. |
Old Norse
Etymology
(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Suffix
-um
- Used to form the dative plural of essentially all nouns and adjectives, as well as most pronouns
- armr → ǫrmum
- Used to denote the 1st person plural forms in the active indicative and imperative forms of most verbs
Phalura
Etymology
(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /-um/
Suffix
-um
- First person singular suffix
Alternative forms
- -úum (With a- and e-ending verb stems)
- -áam (With a- and e-ending verb stems in Biori)
Pijin
Usage notes
The suffix to be used is determined by vowel harmony. If the last vowel in the stem is u, then the suffix is -um. Otherwise, use -em or -im.
Polish
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /um/
- Rhymes: -um
- Syllabification: um
- Homophone: um
Suffix
-um n
- suffix used in singular forms of Latin neuter borrowings
Scots
Etymology 1
From Middle English -um, from Old English -um, dative plural ending used to form adverbials.
Etymology 2
Probably of jocular formation, based partly on Latin -um and partly an altered form of -in(g)s, a verbal noun ending.
Swedish
Suffix
-um n
- ending used for some words of Latin origin
Usage notes
Derived terms
See also
Anagrams
Turkish
Suffix
-um
Usage notes
- If the noun ends in a vowel, it becomes "-m" (for the possessive suffix)
- It's used only when the word's last vowel is "o" or "u". It may change into "-im", "-ım" and "-üm" according to the last vowel of the word. (possessive suffix)
- If the word ends in "p", "ç", "t" or "k", it may change them into "b", "c", "d" and "ğ".
- It may cause the last vowel of the word to be dropped.
- If the word ends in a vowel, an auxiliary consonant is used ; "y". (for the verb to be)
- mutlu - mutluyum
- It must be used with an apostrophe while using with a proper noun.
- Umut - Umut'um
Volapük
Suffix
-um
- Used to form the comparative form of adjectives.