Percepit

Percepit is a Latin verb form found in classical and medieval texts. It is the third‑person singular, perfect tense of the verb percipere, which means to bring into mind, to understand, to comprehend, or to perceive in a sensory or intellectual sense. The perfect tense in Latin indicates a completed action, so percepit is translated in English as “he or she has perceived” or “he or she perceived.”

In the perfect tense, percipere takes the stem perc‑ and the typical perfect endings: -i for first conjugation verbs and -it for many others. Thus percepit is formed from the stem percip+ and the third‑person singular ending ‑it. The verb belongs to the second conjugation and is regular in all its declined forms. Percipere is frequently used in Roman legal, philosophical, and rhetorical writings to express the acquisition of knowledge or the recognition of a fact.

The word appears in notable passages such as Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum and Augustine’s De Trinitate, where it conveys the idea that a person has truly grasped a concept or seen a truth. In medieval glossaries, percepit is often glossed with the German verstehen or the French comprendre, underscoring its conceptual equivalence to modern verbs of understanding.

Because the meaning spans both sensory perception and intellectual comprehension, percepit can be found in a range of contexts—from describing the sight of a celestial body in Livy’s history to a theologian’s understanding of doctrine in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. The term exemplifies the flexibility of Latin verb usage in capturing nuanced modes of cognition and observation.