Latin Verbs with Two Stems

Recognize that many Latin verb roots appear in two forms, and link the word families they build.

Many Latin verbs gave English two stems: one from the present tense and one from the past participle. Knowing both lets you connect words that look unrelated. Mittere, 'to send,' gives mit and miss: transmit and transmission, emit and emission, dismiss. Ducere, 'to lead,' gives duc and duct: produce and product, conduct, deduce and deduction. Vertere, 'to turn,' gives vert and vers: convert and conversion, reverse, version. Scribere, 'to write,' gives scrib and script: describe and description, manuscript. Videre, 'to see,' gives vid and vis: evident, vision, revise.

Worked example: 'The professor asked us to deduce the cause. ' If you know that deduction is 'reasoning from evidence,' you can read deduce as its verb partner: lead your reasoning from the evidence to the cause. Whenever a verb and noun seem to swap a letter or two, suspect a two-stem root.

• 1Many Latin verbs supply two English stems.
• 2Mit/miss, duc/duct, vert/vers, scrib/script, vid/vis are common pairs.
• 3Two-stem pairs link verbs to their nouns.