Pronoun
nēmō m or f (genitive nēminis)
- nobody, no one, no man
- Quem nemo ferro potuit superare nec auro. ― Whom none could overcome with iron or gold.
- Amīcus omnibus, amīcus nemini. ― A friend to all, a friend to none.
- Vicinam neminem amo magis quam te. ― I love a neighbouring nobody more than you.
- Nemo, nisi sapiens, liber est. ― No one, unless he is wise, is free.
- Nemo ante mortem beatus. ― No one [can be called] happy before his death.
- Nemo non formosus filius matri. ― No one fails to be a beautiful son for his mother.
- Absque sanitate nemo felix. ― Without health, no one [is] happy.
- Nemo sine sapientia beatus est. ― No man without wisdom is happy.
- Nemo cum sarcinis enatat. ― No one swims away with his bundles/belongings.
- Nemo est supra leges. ― No one is above the law.
- Nemo ex amoris vulnere sanus abit. ― No one walks away unscathed from the wound of love.
c. 4 BCE – 65 CE,
Seneca the Younger,
De brevitate vitae 15:
- Horum te mori nemo coget, omnes docebunt; horum nemo annos tuos conteret, suos tibi contribuet; nullius ex his sermo periculosus erit, nullius amicitia capitalis, nullius sumptuosa obseruatio.
- No one of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die; no one of these will wear out your years, but each will add his own years to yours; conversations with no one of these will bring you peril, the friendship of none will endanger your life, the courting of none will tax your purse.
Usage notes
- In sentences that already have a negative word, the negative polarity item quisquam (“anyone, anybody”) is used instead of nēmō. It is preferred in Classical Latin to use "nec quisquam" instead of "et nēmō".[1]
- Nēmō is sometimes used adjectivally or appositively with a noun that refers to a person.
Declension
Third-declension noun, singular only.
More information Case, Singular ...
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- Only the nominative, dative, and accusative cases were used in Classical Latin.
- The genitive nēminis is attested in some preclassical authors, and in the Christian poet Commodian (c. 3rd-century).[2] Classical Latin authors regularly used nūllī̆us (the genitive singular form of nūllus) instead.
- The ablative nēmine occurs a couple of times in Plautus and appears to have been used freely by prose authors from Tacitus onwards.[2] Classical Latin authors instead used nūllō and nūllā (the masculine and feminine ablative singular forms of nūllus) after prepositions that govern the ablative case (e.g. Cicero: "cum ab nullo defensus esse", Pro S. Roscio Amerino 29.1, "primum memoria tanta, quantam in nullo cognovisse me arbitror" Brutus 301.7). In ablative absolutes, it seems to have been originally preferred to use a positive ablative pronoun along with a negated adjective form starting with in- (as in "omnibus inscientibus", Cicero In Pisonem 89.10 and "inscientibus cunctis", Livy Ab Urbe Condita 7.5.3).[2] The use of nūllō in ablative absolute constructions seems to be attested first in Valerius Maximus.[2]
- No plural forms are attested in Classical Latin (compare the non-use of "*nobodies" as a plural negative indefinite pronoun in English). In postclassical Latin, there are some rare examples of plural forms (such as nominative/accusative nēminēs or dative/ablative nēminibus) in contexts where Classical Latin would have either a singular form of nēmō (as a pronoun) or a plural form of nūllus (as an adjective or pronoun).
Derived terms
Derived terms
- nēmine contradicente (“with no one speaking against”)
- nēmine discrepante (“with no one speaking against”)
- nēminem captivabimus (“We shall not arrest anyone”)
- nēminem captivabimus nisi iure victum (“We shall not arrest anyone without a court verdict”)
- nemo alter/nemo alius (“no one else”)
- nemo non (“everybody, every one, all”)
- nemo quisquam (“no one at all”)
- nemo unus (“no one”)
- nonnemo/non nemo (“many a one, some”)
References
Harm Pinkster (2015) The Oxford Latin Syntax, volume 1. The Simple Clause, page 1168
Wackernagel, Jacob ((Can we date this quote?)) David Langslow, editor, Lectures on Syntax, Oxford University Press, published 2009, page 739
Further reading
- “nemo”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “nemo”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- nemo in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
- nemo in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
- nēmō in Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar. Boston & London: Ginn, 1903.
- Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book, London: Macmillan and Co.
- Pericles, the greatest man of his day: Pericles, quo nemo tum fuit clarior
- no man of learning: nemo doctus
- no one with any pretence to education: nemo mediocriter doctus
- “nēmō” in volume 9, part 1, column 504, line 26 in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL Open Access), Berlin (formerly Leipzig): De Gruyter (formerly Teubner), 1900–present
