Allen & Greenough · Part First — Words and Forms › Numerals

§132. Numerals

The Latin Numerals may be classified as follows:—

I. NUMERAL ADJECTIVES:

Cardinal Numbers, answering the question how many? as, ūnus, one; duo, two, etc.
Ordinal Numbers,¹ adjectives derived (in most cases) from the Cardinals, and answering the question which in order? as, prīmus, first; secundus, second, etc.
¹ The Ordinals (except secundus, tertius,octāvus, nōnus) are formed by means of suffixes related to those used in the superlative and in part identical with them. Thus, decimus (compare the form īnfimus) may be regarded as the last of a series of ten;prīmus is a superlative of a stem akin to prō; the forms in -tus (quārtus, quīntus, sextus) may be compared with the corresponding Greek forms in -τος, and with superlatives in -ις-το-ς, while the others have the superlative ending -timus (changed to -simus). Of the exceptions, secundus is a participle of sequor; alter is a comparative form (compare -τερος in Greek), andnōnus is contracted from †novenos. The cardinal multiples of ten are compounds of -gint- ‘ten’ (a fragment of a derivative from decem).
Distributive Numerals, answering the question how many at a time? as, singulī, one at a time; bīnī, two by two, etc.

II. NUMERAL ADVERBS, answering the question how often? as, semel, once; bis, twice, etc.

J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough, New Latin Grammar (Boston: Ginn, 1903). Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.