Allen & Greenough · Part First — Words and Forms › Forms of Conjugation

§205. Defective Verbs

Some verbs have lost the Present System, and use only tenses of the Perfect, in which they are inflected regularly. These are—

coepī,¹ I began ¹ Root AP (as in apīscor) with co (n-).	ōdī,² I hate ² Root OD, as in ŏdium.	meminī,³ I remember ³ Root MEN, as in mēns.
	INDICATIVE
PERFECT	coepī	ōdī	meminī
PLUPERFECT	coeperam	ōderam	memineram
FUTURE PERFECT	coeperō	ōderō	meminerō
	SUBJUNCTIVE
PERFECT	coeperim	ōderim	meminerim
PLUPERFECT	coepissem	ōdissem	meminissem
	IMPERATIVE
			mementō
			mementōte
	INFINITIVE
PERFECT	coepisse	ōdisse	meminisse
FUTURE	coeptūrus esse	ōsūrus esse
	PARTICIPLES
PERFECT	coeptus, begun	ōsus, hating or hated
FUTURE	coeptūrus	ōsūrus, likely to hate

a. The passive of coepī is often used with the passive infinitive: as, coeptus sum vocārī, I began to be called, but coepī vocāre, I began to call. For the present system incipiō is used.

b. The Perfect, Pluperfect, and Future Perfect of ōdī and meminī have the meanings of a Present, Imperfect, and Future respectively:—

ōdī, I hate; ōderam, I hated (was hating); ōderō, I shall hate.

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.