Adjective agreement is the rule that a Latin adjective must match the noun it describes in three ways at once: gender, number, and case.
Can recognize Adjective agreement in a short Latin prompt
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
The good girl writes a long letter.
The great man prays before the great temple.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
Adjective agreement is the rule that a Latin adjective must match the noun it describes in three ways at once: gender, number, and case. Getting this right lets you link a description to the correct noun even when they sit far apart in the sentence.
English adjectives never change: "good" is "good" whether the noun is one boy, many girls, or a subject or object. Latin instead re-shapes the adjective's ending to echo its noun, so agreement, not position, tells you what goes with what.
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nom. sing. | bonus | bona | bonum |
| Acc. sing. | bonum | bonam | bonum |
| Nom. plural | bonī | bonae | bona |
Examples:
Two things trip up English speakers. First, do not expect the adjective and noun to share identical letters: rēx bonus is correct because both are masculine nominative singular, even though the endings look different. Agreement is about the three categories, not matching spelling. Second, when an adjective is separated from its noun, use the shared gender-number-case to reunite them rather than assuming the nearest word.
Apply this grammar in A1 course exercises
Practice ExercisesThe good girl writes a long letter.
Bona matches puella, longam matches epistulam. English adjectives never change; Latin ones match on three counts at once.
The great man prays before the great temple.
The same magnus takes different endings according to its noun's case. Romans also prayed at the altar in front of the temple, not inside it - the cella held the cult statue.
Practice in course
Apply this grammar in A1 course exercises