§236. Nouns of Agency
Nouns of Agency properly denote the agent or doer of an action. But they include many words in which the idea of agency has entirely faded out, and also many words used as adjectives.
a. Nouns denoting the agent or doer of an action are formed from roots or verb-stems by means of the suffixes—
-tor (-sor), M.; -trīx, F.
| can-tor, can-trīx, singer; | can-ere (root CAN), to sing. |
| vic-tor, vic-trīx, conqueror (victorious); | vinc-ere (VIC), to conquer. |
| tōn-sor (for † tond-tor), tōns-trīx (for | |
| † tond-trīx), hair-cutter; | tond-ēre (TOND as root), to shear. |
| petī-tor, candidate; | pet-ĕre (PET; petī- as stem), to seek |
By analogy -tor is sometimes added to noun-stems, but these may be stems of lost verbs: as, viā-tor, traveller, from via, way (but cf. the verb inviō).
b. t-, M. or F., added to verb-stems makes nouns in -es (-itis, -etis; stem it-, et-) descriptive of a character:—
- prae-stes, -stitis, (verb-stem from root STA, stāre, stand), guardian.
- teges, -etis (verb-stem tege-, cf. tegō, cover), a coverer, a mat.
- pedes, -itis ( pēs, ped-is, foot, and I, root of īre, go), foot-soldier.
c. -ō (genitive -ōnis, stem ōn)-, M., added to verb-stems1 indicates a person employed in some specific art or trade:—
- com-bibō (BIB as root in bibō, bibere, drink), a pot-companion.
- gerō, -ōnis (GES in gerō, gerere, carry), a carrier.
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.