quo modo or quomodo is often translated as how, and that is a fair and reasonable translation. Still, it is nice to have a deeper understanding of the word(s). quo is a form of the Interrogative Pronoun and so on its own means what? modus means measure, size, way or method, among other things. Here we will take it as method. Now, you may remember recently reading a post on the Ablative of Manner. quo modo is an example of such a thing. So, taken together, the words mean by what method? Hence, how?
A very common expression in the Latin classroom is quomodo dicitur…? As in quomodo dicitur ‘cat’? Literally, By what method is ‘cat’ said? The answer to which would be ‘cat’ ‘feles’ dicitur.
There is an excellent Podcast called Quomodo Dicitur? that I cannot recommend highly enough. Here is the description lifted straight from their website quomododicitur.com;
Quomodo Dicitur? is a weekly Latin podcast about anything. In each episode Augustus, Iustus, and Iason chat about a particular topic, from life in the desert, to our favorite sports, to the kinds of hijinks we get up to on the weekends. Our goal is to provide meaningful, contextualized Latin input. It might get messy. Sometimes we’ll make mistakes. But we do hope it will be fun.
Hello reader. Recently I promised that I would narrate to you how that suitcase full of money was placed in the dumpster.