Way back on the seventeenth of May, there was a post called Amanda propaganda agenda, an exploration of the marvelous Gerundive of Obligation. To make a long story short, we saw how the Gerundive of Obligation could be used to show that something had to be done. For example, nobis libri legendi sunt to us there are having to be read books or the books must be read by us or we need to read the books. legendi, you see, is a Gerundive of Obligation.
If you take a look at that previous post, you will see that it dealt only with Transitive Verbs, that is Verbs that can take an Object; to read, to find, to love, to spread, and so forth. Take this sentence for example; nos eam amamus we love her. amamus is a Transitive Verb, so we can easily turn it into a Gerundive of Obligation; nobis ea amanda est to us she is having to be loved or we must love her. But what if the Verb is Intransitive and cannot take an Object? I’m thinking of Verbs like to run, to walk, to arrive and to hurry. Can we use a Gerundive or Obligation to say We need to hurry? We sure can.
The first step is the Verb est he, she or it is. Here, we take est to mean it is, although exactly what the it stands for is kinda uncertain. We then make a phrase that means it is having to be hurried. That is festinandum est. Like any Gerundive of Obligation, the person or people to whom this obligation falls are expressed in the Dative Case, nobis to us. nobis est festinandum to us it is having to be hurried or we need to hurry.
Finally, you may be wondering why the three Gerundives in today’s post have different endings; legendi, amanda and festinandum. The answer is simple; the endings of the Gerundives have changed to Agree With the Noun or Pronoun that they are describing. legendi has a Masculine Plural ending to Agree With libri. amanda has a Feminine Singular ending to Agree With ea. And festinandum has a Neuter Singular ending to Agree With the it in est it is.
The plan having been explained, Jessica, rising from her stool, says ‘We need to hurry. Unless I am mistaken, the private investigator has already made those people more certain that Marcellus has Hadrian’s suitcase.’ Note: made more certain=informed