Gerunds and Gerundives in the Wild

Aside from the state motto of New Mexico, crescit eundo, there is the motto of Millfield School in Somerset: molire molendo '(Loosely translated as "to succeed by grinding")'. 'Loosely', of course, because since molior is a deponent verb, molire is a second-person singular indicative or, better for this context, an imperative. The infinitive, as implied by the loose translation, is moliri.

As for the gerundive, and real Latin, there is the formula found in Pompeian electoral dipinti:

aed(ilem/iles) [or duovirum] v(iis) a(edibus) sacr(is) p(ublicis) procurandis oro vos faciatis.
See, for examples, I 1. nos. 11 and 18 in R. Wallace's An Introduction to Wall Inscriptions from Pompeii and Herculaneum (Wauconda, Illinois: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2005).

Ablative absolutes with future participles

I vividly remember my school master telling me in my upper-sixth year that there was only one ablative absolute with a future participle in Latin literature and that we were looking at it. I do not, however, recall what the unseen passage was.

Now, thanks to the persistence in doing good of a colleague, there is a candidate, Ovid, Heroides, XVIII (Leander Heroni) 111-112:

iamque fugaturā Tithoni coniuge noctem
     praevius Aurorae Lucifer ortus erat;

This has a strong claim to being the one instance, if there is only one. I remember reading about Hero and Leander and being told a cautionary tale about confusing transitive fugāre with intransitive fugere (not to mention the difference of conjugation).

Gerundives and gerunds in the wild...

The same inscription that mentions the suovetaurilia (CIL VI 2099 II 5 and 13-14) also features three gerundives as theonyms: Adolenda 'a goddess presiding over the burning of trees struck by lightning', Commolenda 'a goddess presiding over the grinding or pounding of ritually burnt objects', and Deferunda '(app.) the personification of the ritual taking down of an object'. Only the last of these has a reference to the pagina and line in OLD s.v.

That inscription also refers to coinquenda (also in VI 2065): '[dub.] (app.) To cut back or prune'. Lewis and Short have an entry for the gerundive.

As for the gerund, the state motto of New Mexico is crescit eundo 'It grows as it goes'.

adiutare in a fragment of Cicero

In 'Petronius and the New Non-Literary Latin', J.N. Adams refers (p. 12, n. 7) to a single occurrence of the frequentative adiutare (contrast adiuuare) 'in a letter'. He does not give a precise citation, but refers to p. 80 of his 1977 work on Claudius Terentianus.

The instance in Cicero is ep.fr.11(10)3, according to OLD, which cites P.Mich.471.28 (Claudius Terentianus: images), Lucr.1.812 and Sallust's epistle de re publica 2.12.4, as well as Plautus and Terence, as mentioned by Adams.

This fragment can be found in the OCT M. Tulli Ciceronis: Epistulae, III (1902 ed. L.C. Purser [not paginated] and 1958 ed. W.S. Watt, p. 171). Arusianius Messius vii, p. 453.23 noted (on adiuta hoc illos) Cicero Ad Axium, ex libro I: si tu aliquid nos adiutare potes.

The <I> in Ibycus

The quantity of the <I> in this poet's name is evident in a Latin source, Statius, Silvae V.3.153 (in context):

Hinc tibi vota patrum credi generosaque pubes
te monitore regi, mores et facta priorum
discere, quis casus Troiae, quam tardus Vlixes,
quantus equum pugnasque virum decurrere versu
Maeonides quantumque pios ditarit agrestes          150
Ascraeus Siculusque senex, qua lege recurrat
Pindaricae vox flexa lyrae volucrumque precator
Ibycus et tetricis Alcman cantatus Amyclis
Stesichorusque ferox saltusque ingressa viriles
non formidata temeraria Chalcide Sappho,             155
quosque alios dignata chelys. 

OLD s.v. Ibycus: 'A Greek poet of Rhegium,
of the 6th century B.C., whose murder was
witnessed and revealed by cranes.
Cic.Tusc.4.71; uolucrum... precator ~us STAT.Silv.5.3.153.'

The Latin 3pl.pf. indicative

L.R. Palmer,  The Latin Language, 1954, p. 275:
(1) *-is-ont >-ĕrunt;
(2) stative -ē- + -ri > -ēre; 
(3) a contamination of the two types > -ērunt.

Examples:
(1) matri longa decem tulĕrunt fastidia menses. Virgil, Eclogue IV.61.

(2) urbem Romam a principio reges habuēre. Tacitus, Annales I.1.1

(3) Postquam te fata tulērunt,
ipsa Pales agros atque ipse reliquit Apollo. Virgil, Eclogue V.34-5.

A reverse index of Latin vocabulary

All adjectives ending, e.g., in -ifer can be collated from Lewis and Short on Perseus, so can all adjectives in -bundus, of which adminicul-, baccha- (Q. Curt. Ruf. IX.10: foot), and vaga- are favourites.

Chaque mot a son histoire

The statement "Each word has its own history" - a reaction to the Neogrammarian Regularity Hypothesis - is attributed to Jules Gilliéron.

According to William A. Kretzschmar, Jr., this statement is not found in that scholar's published works ('Dialectology and the history of the English language' at p. 84, in Donka Minkova and Robert P. Stockwell (eds) Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective, Volume 1, Walter de Gruyter, 2002.

Word-formation in the Oxford Latin Dictionary

The OLD often leaves the impression that Latin words were formed by taking one free-standing word and adding a suffix or another free-standing word.

Examples include:

naufragō ... [as next + -O^3]

naufragus^1 ... [= NAVIFRAGUS]
naufragus^2 ... [prec.]
...
nāuiculārius ... [NAUICLA + -ARIUS]

nāuifragus 'shipwrecking' is an exception: [NAVIS + frag- (FRANGO) + -VS]. Here, at least (other instances have yet to be found), we are told that it is the root frag-, as seen in frango, that is involved.

Plurals of regional names

Catullus xlv. 21-22 (hendecasyllables; as Kroll)

unam Septimius misellus Acmen
mavolt quam Syrias Britanniasque:

'Poor Septimius prefers his Acme / to all the Syrias and Britains;' (Guy Lee)

[ 21 agmen codd., cf. ll. 1, 2, 23; Neither Ἀκμή or Ἄκμη in is LGPN; 22 Syriasque codd.]

For another Acme (a slave of Julia, involved with Herod and Antipater), see Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae 17.134, 137, 139, 141, 145, 182, and 183 and De bello Judaico 1.641, 643, 645, and 661.

Syria and Britain - a hot topic in 55 BC - stand for wealthy territories.

Kroll cites Propertius 2.16.10 -
deinde, ubi consumpto restabit munere pauper,
    dic alias iterum naviget Illyrias!

- and xiv 18 for plural personal names, with Plautus Bacchides 649 and Kuehner-St. 1, 72.

The commentators' notes become somewhat circular. One Greek passage may be adduced, Hdt.3.160.1:
μᾶλλον ἢ Βαβυλῶνάς οἱ εἴκοσι πρὸς τῇ ἐούσῃ προσγενέσθαι
'rather than that twenty Babylons accrue to him in addition to the one that was already his'.

Plurals of personal names: many Mariuses were evident in Julius Caesar even as a boy (Plu.Caes.1.4).
δύο γὰρ Ἀντιόχους ὑπέθετο τοῦ βασιλέως υἱούς, ὄντος ἑνὸς τοῦ τότε συνεστρατευμένου
'For he supposed that there were two Antiochi there, sons of the king, whereas there was only one with him on this campaign'. (Plb.16.19.9)

Non-standard or non-Classical forms in the Greek Res Gestae Divi Augusti

Section 1, line 13 has ε[ἴλ]ατ[ο] rather than the Classical form εἴλετο. The aor.1 form of the simple verb is first attested in the Septuagint and Diodorus Siculus (then Philo, the New Testament, etc.).

Cf. Phrynichus, Eclogae 154:   
Ἀφείλατο· ὅσοι διὰ τοῦ α λέγουσιν, ἀσχημονοῦσιν, δέον διὰ τοῦ ε λέγειν ἀφείλετο· καὶ ἀφειλόμην δεῖ λέγειν διὰ τοῦ ο, ἀλλὰ μὴ διὰ τοῦ α.

More plurals of personal names

Further to an earlier collection and the one before that:

Plutarch, On the Fortune of Alexander (Moralia) 328 C:
Socrates and Plato only taught people who understood Greek. Even so they won over only a few: ἀλλὰ Κριτίαι καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδαι καὶ Κλειτοφῶντες,... ἄλλῃ πη παρετράπησαν 'But the Critiases, the Alcibiadeses, and the Clitophons were turned aside'.

Pliny, Epistles III.21.5 (line 10 of Martial, epigrams 10.19)

Tunc me vel rigidi legant Catones.
'Then, even the stern Catoes could read me.'

This, presumably, does not refer to the two long-dead Catoes, Major and Minor, but their contemporary imitators.

More on names, their plurals, and on ethnics, etc.

The first (and only) fragment of Susarion, who is credited with being the first Greek comedian, presents all of his terms of identification, almost:

ἀκούετε λεῴ· Σουσαρίων λέγει τάδε,

υἱὸς Φιλίνου Μεγαρόθεν Τριποδίσκιος·

κακὸν γυναῖκες· ἀλλ’ ὅμως, ὦ δημόται,

οὐκ ἔστιν οἰκεῖν οἰκίαν ἄνευ κακοῦ.

καὶ γὰρ τὸ γῆμαι καὶ τὸ μὴ γῆμαι κακόν. 

Name, Susariaon: Patronymic, son of Philinos (but with υἱὸς explicit): village ethnic 
Τριποδίσκιος [a κωμήτης, says Steph.Byz.]: and city/regional ethnic equivalent Μεγαρόθεν (the testimonia give Μεγαρεύς).

Roman daughters took the feminine of their gentilicium as their personal name: daughter of a Cornelius would be a Cornelia, etc. So, what happened when there were several daughters in one immediate family?

legimus epistulas Corneliae matris Gracchorum: apparet filios non tam in gremio educatos quam in sermone matris. auditus est nobis Laeliae C. f. saepe sermo: ergo illam patris elegantia tinctam vidimus et filias eius Mucias ambas. quarum sermo mihi fu it notus, et neptes Licinias, quas nos quidem ambas, hanc vero Scipionis etiam tu, Brute, credo, aliquando audisti loquentem. 

Cicero, Brutus 211

Dawn appears as Ἠώς (not Ἕως) in Isoc.10.52 (a mythological context?), but as Ἕως in E. (Hipp.455, Ion 1158, Phaeth.5). A name hopping dialectal lines...

A *stray* gerundive in the wild

The ancients had fill-in-the-blanks forms much as we do. An inscription from Algeria (AE 1931: no. 112) seems to reflect misuse of a manual for writing epitaphs:

hic corpus iacet pueri nominandi
'here lies the body of {boy to be named here}

It is also a reminder of that Eagles' song:
'Well, the towns lay out across the dusty plains
Like graveyards filled with tombstones, waitin' for the names'.

Reasons to Study Latin (rather than Greek)

From Intelligent Life:

the editor Tim de Lisle explains why Latin is the best language:
it is not just the abstract nouns that have got themselves borrowed.

Reasons to study Latin and Greek

Following the debate here about learning Greek to encourage precision in English, I was reminded of this piece [from the Sunday Times of late June 2010], in which it was explained that studying the classical languages 'teaches diligence and responsibility - because they have to be punctual and do their homework without help from the parents' (emphasis mine).

Then, as John Paul Getty observed, classicists 'sell more oil'.

Vegetables in classical literature

Some forms of scholarship, facilitated by electronic research tools, are not to be encouraged:

Silanus, Versio Latina Magonis frag. 41.1-3: parandi sunt boues nouelli, quadrati, grandibus membris, CORNibus proceris ac nigrantibus et robustis
Cato, De Agri Cultura 133.3: eo modo quoduis genus arborum facere poteris, uti radices bene haBEANt.
Cicero, Philippicae 10.12: Quod si ipsa res publica iudicaret aut si omne ius decretis eius statueretur, AntONIONe an Bruto legiones populi Romani adiudicaret?
Horace, Epistulae 1.18.74-5: ne dominus pueri pulchri caraeve puellae / munere te parvo BEET aut incommodus angat.
Horace, Ars Poetica 379-80: campestribus abstinet armis / indoctusque pilae discive troCHIVE quiescit
Vitruvius 9.8.4: aquarum expressiones auTOMATOpoetasque machinas multaque deliciarum genera
Juvenal, Saturae 6.87: inmemor illa domus et coniugis atque sororis / nil patriae indulsit, plorantisque improba natos / utque magis stuPEAS ludos Paridemque reliquit.
Silius Italicus 16.476: Theron, POTATOr aquae