adornabant

Adornabant is a Latin verb form that expresses yesterday’s ongoing action of decorating. It is the imperfect indicative active, third person plural, of the first‑conjugation verb adorāre, meaning to adorn or decorate. The imperfect tense in Latin denotes past actions that were ongoing, habitual, or repeated, so adornabant translates as “they were adorning” or “they used to adorn.” The form is built from the present stem adorn- plus the imperfect ending -ā-bant, with the -bant marking the third person plural.

In usage, adornabant appears in narrative passages to describe groups performing acts of decoration on people, objects, or spaces, such as garments, temples, or monuments. The surrounding context—whether it is a continuous past action or a habitual past habit—helps determine the nuance of the translation.

Related forms include adornant (present 3rd plural: they adorn), adornābat (3rd singular imperfect: he/she/it was adorning), adornaverant (3rd plural pluperfect: they had adorned), and adornabunt (3rd plural future: they will adorn). These forms together illustrate the normal tense and aspect system of Latin verbs in the first conjugation.

Etymology and related vocabulary: adorāre is a standard first‑conjugation Latin verb meaning to adorn or decorate. It is related to other terms about decoration or ornamentation in Latin, such as ornare (to decorate, furnish) and adorāre in its broader sense of honoring or venerating in different contexts.

This article provides a concise overview of adornabant as a grammatical form and its typical past‑tense usage in classical Latin texts.