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Does "necare immortalis" translate coherently from Latin?
I want to use a Latin title for a story, and I was looking for something that would roughly mean "To Kill an Immortal," or at least convey the same sort of sentiment. Looking things up, "Necare Immortalis" was the best translation I found. Can someone who knows more Latin than me tell me if that works the way I want it to or not?
3 Answers
- Tom LLv 79 years agoFavorite Answer
No, it does not work.
Necare immortalem = to murder/put to death an immortal
Interficere immortalem = to kill an immortal.
Latin was a pretty bloodthirsty language - several ways to say kill/murder/exterminate/etc. depending on way, method, and reason.
- 9 years ago
The noun needs to be accusative, rather than nominative: necare immortalem. The word order is up to you, really; it makes exactly the same sense either way round. You've got a range of options for the verb kill, however, and necare might not be the best one:
necare: to kill, usually without weapons, by means of starvation/poison/disease, that sort of thing.
occidere: to kill, violenty; it originally had the meaning 'strike down', extending to kill in much the same way as the English idiom. Very common.
inteficere: 'to bring to nought'; thus, of people, to kill them. Pretty neutral.
perimere: a bit more violent than just kill; destroy, perhaps. Very common in poetry and later prose.
There are other options, but these are certainly the most common.
Source(s): Lewis and Short, for particular nuances.
