Random Latin Word Generator

The Random Latin Word Generator shows you between one and ten Latin words, each on a card with its English meaning underneath. The list holds 289 words, most of them the kind you meet in a first-year Latin course: nouns like aqua, terra, urbs and rex, verbs like amo, cogito and doceo, adjectives like fortis, dulcis and sapiens, and a handful of connectives like ab, ad, et and quod. It's a small, clean list rather than a dictionary, which makes it good for vocabulary drills, picking a motto or a name, and finding the root behind an English word.

What you get

One control: the count, from 1 to 10. There is no part-of-speech or theme filter; the whole list is shuffled on every press, and no word repeats inside a batch. Each card shows the word in its dictionary form (nominative singular for nouns, first-person singular for verbs) and a short gloss of one to three English meanings. Cards display the word and meaning with initial capitals, so aqua appears as "Aqua" and its gloss as "Water"; Latin itself did not capitalize common nouns, so lowercase them if you're using the word in a sentence.

The cards do not show gender, declension, conjugation, macrons or pronunciation. If you're using a word for anything more than a single-word motto, look it up in a full dictionary such as Lewis and Short or Wiktionary to get the genitive and the long vowels.

What's in the list

The 289 words group loosely into themes, which you'll notice after a few presses:

• Nature and the sky: aqua, terra, ignis, ventus, mare, silva, mons, flumen, lacus, insula, sol, luna, stella, caelum, nubes, pluvia, tonitrus, arbor, flos, radix.
• People and family: pater, mater, frater, soror, filius, uxor, homo, femina, senex, civis, amicus, rex, regina, dominus, imperator, nauta, faber, medicus, judex, sacerdos.
• Body: corpus, caput, manus, pes, oculus, cor, lingua, lacertus.
• War and the state: bellum, gladius, scutum, hasta, arcus, sagitta, legio, castellum, obsidio, senatus, imperium, civitas, regnum, justitia, poena, testis.
• Abstract nouns that end up in mottos: veritas, fides, pax, spes, amor, honor, victoria, gaudium, ordo, lux, mors, vita, tempus, aetas, nihil, umbra.
• Verbs: amo, vivo, voco, teneo, volo, dico, edo, lego, rego, scio, tango, vado, cogito, doceo, disco, venio, cado, habeo, laboro, patior, quaero.
• Adjectives and colors: magnus, bonus, malus, fortis, celer, dulcis, bellus, pulcher, fidelis, sapiens, audax, superbus, timidus, albus, niger, rufus, caeruleus, viridis, aureus.
• Numbers: unus through quinque, plus quintus.

Ways people use it

• Vocabulary practice. Generate ten, cover the meanings, and test yourself. Because the glosses are short, it works as a fast flashcard deck for the core words that appear in Wheelock's and the Cambridge Latin Course.
• Mottos and taglines. A single Latin word on a crest, a team shirt or a company page (Veritas, Fidelis, Audax) still reads as serious. Check the grammar before pairing two words; adjectives must agree with their noun.
• Tattoo ideas. One word is safer than a phrase, and a dictionary-form noun like lux or spes can't be declined wrong.
• Naming. Brands, boats, pets, fantasy kingdoms and spaceships get named from this list all the time: Stella, Luna, Nimbus, Ignis, Vulpes, Astrum.
• Etymology. Seeing aqua, corpus, manus and lingua next to their meanings explains aquarium, corporation, manual and language in one glance, which is why English teachers use lists like this for root-word lessons.

How Latin words are built

A few facts make the output more useful. Latin nouns belong to one of five declensions, and the dictionary form here is the nominative. Most first-declension nouns end in -a and are feminine (aqua, terra, luna, stella, femina); most second-declension nouns end in -us or -um and are masculine or neuter (equus, dominus, bellum, templum); third-declension nouns are the irregular-looking ones (rex, urbs, mors, pax, lux, homo, tempus, corpus). Verbs are listed in the first-person singular present, so amo is "I love," not "to love" (that's amare). Adjectives are given in the masculine, so magnus becomes magna with a feminine noun and magnum with a neuter one. Latin had no letters J, U or W in the classical period; the list uses the modern spellings jus and judex where you'll also see ius and iudex.

Latin sits alongside the other language tools on the site: the Random French Word Generator, Random Spanish Word Generator and Japanese Word Generator work the same way, and the Random Language Generator picks a language for you when you can't decide. Browse all word and language generators from the category page.