Neglegens

Neglegens is a Latin adjective and present participle meaning "neglecting" or "negligent." It is formed from the verb neglego, neglegere, which means to neglect. As a participle, neglegens agrees with gender, number, and case, and can be used to describe a person or action characterized by carelessness or failure to fulfill duties. The related noun negligentia expresses the fault or quality of negligence, and English derives the concepts of negligence and negligent from this Latin root through later French and legal transmission.

In classical Latin usage, neglegens can describe a person who acts carelessly or fails to attend to obligations; it appears in moral, legal, and rhetorical texts to characterize conduct as careless rather than intentional. In Roman law and subsequent medieval scholastic and civil law writings, distinctions between negligent and intentional acts were important, and neglegens functioned within these discussions as a descriptive term for fault less than criminal intent. The noun negligentia, and related terms, crystallized into the legal vocabulary that influenced later European legal systems, shaping the modern concept of negligence.

Modern English usage does not typically employ neglegens; the standard terms are negligent (adjective) and negligence (noun). In linguistic and historical contexts, neglegens may be cited as an example of Latin legal and moral vocabulary. It is often distinguished from negligentia, which denotes negligence as a concept rather than describing a person. Overall, neglegens serves as a historical pointer to the Latin roots of terms that now express carelessness and legal fault.