Heavy Construction

The Allen and Greenough is still under construction; so some links may not work quite the way you would expect.

DERIVATION OF NOUNS.



Nouns of Agency.



236.

Nouns of Agency properly denote the agent or doer of an action. But they include many words in which the idea of agency has entirely faded out, and also many words used as adjectives.



a. Nouns denoting the agent or doer of an action are formed from roots or verb-stems by means of the suffixes -



-tor (-sor), M.; -tríx, F.

can-tor, can-tríx, singer;
vic-tor, vic-tríx, conqueror (victorious); vinc-ere (VIC), to conquer.
tón-sor (for tond-tor), tóns-tríx (for
tond-tríx), hair-cutter; tond-ére (TOND as root), to shear.
petí-tor, candidate; pet-ere (PET; petí- as stem), to seek.
By analogy -tor is sometimes added to noun-stems, but these may be stems of lost verbs: as, viá-tor, traveller, from via, way (but cf. the verb invió).



NOTE 1: The termination -tor (-sor) has the same phonetic change as the supine ending -tum (-sum), and is added to the same form of root or verb-stem as that ending. The stem-ending is tór- (§ 234. II. 15), which is shortened in the nominative.

NOTE 2: The feminine form is always -tríx. Masculines in -sor lack the feminine, except expulsor (expultríx) and tónsor (tónstríx).



b. t-, M. or F., added to verb-stems makes nouns in -es (-itis, -etis; stem it-, et-) descriptive of a character: -



c. -ó (genitive -ónis, stem ón-), M., added to verb-stems[1][So conceived, but perhaps this termination was originally added to noun-stems.] indicates a person employed in some specific art or trade: -

NOTE: This termination is also used to form many nouns descriptive of personal characteristics (cf. § 255).