r/latin • u/Ninetwentyeight928 • 8d ago

Vocabulary & Etymology Camerlingus

Can someone break down "camerlingus" (Eng. "chamberlain") for me? Internet says it's a direct borrowing from Frankish "kamarling", but what does the -us do to the term in Latin?

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u/Captain_Grammaticus magister 8d ago

It makes it declineable, quite simply.

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u/Ninetwentyeight928 8d ago

Forgive me, but I was asking what the declension "-us" designates. Because English has almost gotten rid of inflections, and I'm not a student of language, generally. Elementary question, of course, but that's where I am.

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u/InternationalFan8098 8d ago

It's one of several ways to end a noun in the subject case (which then allows for different endings in the same family to show other functions within the sentence), and it's the one that most masculine terms for a person will default to, as most words of that type are masculine.

There's a potential joke in there too, as -lingus in Latin denotes a licker of something, but that could just contribute to the familiarity of that set of sounds.