Latin
The genitive is one of the cases of nouns and pronouns in Latin. Latin genitives still have certain modern scientific uses:
- Scientific names of living things sometimes contain genitives, as in the plant name Buddleja davidii, meaning "David's buddleia". Here Davidii is the genitive of Davidius, a Latinized version of the English name. It is not capitalized because it is the second part of a scientific name.
- Names of astronomical constellations are Latin, and the genitives of their names are used in naming objects in those constellations, as in the Bayer designation of stars. For example, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo is called Alpha Virginis, which is to say "Alpha of Virgo", as virginis is the genitive of virgÅ.
Read more about this topic: Genitive Case
Famous quotes containing the word latin:
“Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.”
—Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953)
“In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He tries by a peculiar speech to speak
The peculiar potency of the general,
To compound the imagination’s Latin with
The lingua franca et jocundissima.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)