Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-98.224.165.94-20140223210359/@comment-93.144.109.163-20140615220046

First of all, how lazy of me to have missed that, being a Latin enthusiast. Having said that, I would like to point out a few things - for those uninterested in TLDR, just see last paragraph.

First of all, it should be noted that there is no possible direct object in the sentence "Veneor nox". As already noted above, "vereor" is a deponent verb, and, having already excluded normal transitivity, it can be either used intransitively (cannot have direct object) or absolutely (transitively, yet with no object or else required). The absence of additional structures (gen.; de + abl.; indirect interrocative clause) that would be mandatory in the former case allows us to infer the correctness of the latter.

An exception to this would be the presence of a hypothetical implicit reflexive pronoun "me", yet dictionaries (true, paper ones, not wishy-washy things like Google Translate) do not report usage of reflexive structures with vereor, i.e. se vereri; let alone implied reflexive structures, i.e. (se) vereri. The most similar thing one could find in them would be acc.+ inf., which is clearly not the case unless we hypothesize ulterior implied elements and so on - a thing quite contrary to normal logic, at least according to me.

Due to all this, I argue that in this sentence "vereor" is used in an absolute manner, which restricts its meaning to either "to show respect/reverece/awe" or "to fear, to feel apprehension" (Oxford Latin Dictionary) - not that there were many other meanings to start with, just that the others always require some form of complement.

On a side note, I would like to point out that the "veneor" spoken of above does not exist, and that the closest things to it would be "veneo" (to come) and "venor" (to hunt), both of which present nothing like "veneor" in their conjugation. I checked out of thoroughness by means of books first and by use of a conjugating program on a CD of a dictionary later.

Next, "nox, noctis" as a noun can have lots of meanings, covering the semantic field of night and darkness, even with more poetic meanings like "underworld" and "death". Its declined form "nox" can only be nominative or vocative, as there is no reference of "nox" having a rarer, case-specific alternate declension. In other words, "nox" is not used as an alternative to normal genitive singular noctis, accusative singular noctem and so on. Hence the sentence would translate as "I, the night, fear" or "Oh night, I fear".

In the first case, the translation sounds quite awkward, at least to me, due to a different usage of implied subjects between English and Latin. A solution to this would be further expanding the appositive nominative to mean "in the role of/as the night" - a thing which is perfectly compatible with Latin grammar.

Still, "nox" can also be an adverb, meaning "during the night/nighttime, overnight..." and so on. The ensuing translation would then be "during the night, I fear" or whatever else comes to one's mind. It should be noted, though, that in this case poetic usages such as "in death" or "in the darkness/underworld" are less likely, at least according to Latin dictionaries covering Latin until early Christian Latin literature.

To sum it up, I suggest that a translation striving to be grammaticaly correct would be something along the lines of:

Oh night, I fear

I, the night, fear

As the night, I fear

During the night, I fear

(with all possible nuances regarding word choice)