Expert: Maria - 9/9/2008

Question
What is the Latin translation of "Last line of defense"?

Answer
Hello,

In Latin there are the two following translations for   “Last line of defense”:

-“Extrema praesidia”.

or:

-“Extrema opera munitionesque”.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best,
Maria
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Note that:

-EXTREMA (nominative neuter plural of the adjective EXTREMUS agreed with PRAESIDIA) = last

-PRAESIDIA (nominative neuter plural of PRAESIDIUM, 2nd.declension) = line of defense

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-EXTREMA (nominative neuter plural of the adjective EXTREMUS agreed with OPERA) = last

-OPERA (nominative neuter plural of OPUS, 3rd.declension) MUNITIONESQUE (nominative plural of MUNITIO, 3rd.declension) plus the enclitic –QUE) = line of defense.

Finally note that the above translations are in the nominative case as subject of a phrase, but they change ending when used as indirect object, for Latin is an inflected language with five declensions and six cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative).