Impersonal Verbs
Impersonal verbs live only in the third person singular and take no real subject — Latin says pluit and English answers "it rains," but that "it" is grammatical filler, not a thing in the world.
The same shape covers four very different jobs: weather (pluit, ningit, tonat), what's right or allowed (oportet, licet, decet), how a person feels (pudet, paenitet, miseret), and what happens to turn out (accidit, ēvenit ut).
The trap is the feeling group. Miseret mē doesn't mean "he pities me" — it means "it grieves me," with mē in the accusative as the person affected and the cause of the feeling in the genitive: miseret mē tuī, "I pity you." The verb stays third-singular even though English wants a personal subject.
"it Xs" — Latin uses third-singular with no real subject; English supplies an empty "it"
For feeling-verbs the person goes in the accusative and the cause in the genitive: pudet mē culpae, "I am ashamed of the fault."
| Case | 3rd Singular Only |
|---|---|
| Pres. Indic. | oportet |
| Impf. Indic. | oportēbat |
| Fut. Indic. | oportēbit |
| Perf. Indic. | oportuit |
| Plup. Indic. | oportuerat |
| Fut. Perf. | oportuerit |
| Pres. Subjv. | oporteat |
| Impf. Subjv. | oportēret |
| Perf. Subjv. | oportuerit |
| Plup. Subjv. | oportuisset |
| Pres. Infin. | oportēre |
| Perf. Infin. | oportuisse |
See It In Action
— Verg. Aen. v. 354
Textbook feeling-impersonal: tē is accusative (the person), lāpsōrum is genitive (the cause), miseret is locked in 3rd singular. English flips both into "you pity the fallen."
— Verg. Aen. xii. 229
Pudet with no expressed accusative — context (the vocative Ō Rutulī) supplies who feels the shame. The verb itself never inflects for person.
— Catull. 70. 4
Oportet governs the infinitive scrībere — that infinitive phrase is the real "subject." Impersonal in form, but the action being prescribed is what the verb is about.
— Verg. Aen. vi. 179
Vergil's ītur is the passive of intransitive eō used impersonally — "someone goes" or "they go." English usually renders it active because we have no matching idiom.
With pudet, paenitet, miseret, taedet, piget, the cases reverse what English instinct expects.
person = acc., cause = gen.
miseret mē tuī
I pity you (it grieves me of you)
person = nom., object = acc.
amō tē
I love you
Tip: If the verb is one of the five feeling-impersonals (miseret, pudet, paenitet, taedet, piget), do NOT make the accusative the subject — find the genitive that names what the feeling is about.
In miseret tē frātris tuī, who pities whom?
Study Tips
- •When you see a third-singular verb with no nominative in sight, check the impersonal list before hunting for a hidden subject — Latin often genuinely doesn't have one.
- •For pudet, paenitet, miseret, taedet, piget, find the accusative first (that's the person feeling it) and the genitive second (that's what they feel it about). English flips both into a normal subject + object.
- •Oportet, licet, necesse est almost always govern an infinitive or a ut-clause — the action being prescribed is the real "subject" of the impersonal verb.
- •When you meet ītur, ventum est, pūgnātum est, translate as "there is going," "they came," "there was fighting" — the passive of an intransitive verb is impersonal by default.