Vitanuova for 2006 March 26 (entry 0)

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Pirate joke >

I was just thinking that "caveat" as a noun makes more sense when it refers to an impersonal warning (since "caveat" means "he should look out" in the phrase "caveat emptor"). If one person is directly warning another person about a pitfall, it might make more sense to speak of a "caveas" ("you should look out").

For example: "I wanted to tell you about a caveat with this service." In this case the person being warned is "you" (the listener) and not the impersonal unspecified "buyer". Therefore, it would seem that the jussive subjunctive should have a second-person subject, not a third-person subject. Why not "I wanted to tell you about a caveas with this service"? If Consumer Reports is writing about a product, they might identify something that "the buyer" should watch out for (aliquid quod caveat emptor) but if my friend writes to me about the same product, perhaps the warning is something that I should watch out for (aliquid quod caveas tu).

English speakers might be most familiar with the second-person singular subjunctive of second conjugation Latin verbs by way of the writ of "habeas corpus" ("you [the jailer] should have the body [of the prisoner here in court for the court to examine]").


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