ferre

Ferre is a Latin verb meaning to bear, carry, or bring. In classical usage it covers both physical carrying and broader senses such as bearing a burden, bringing forth, or enduring. It also appears in various figurative and idiomatic expressions and serves as the basis for a large family of compound verbs formed with prefixes.

Grammatical notes: Ferre is highly irregular. The standard principal parts are fero, ferri, tuli, latum. This allows the verb to supply its irregular stems for all tenses. Common present-indicative forms include fero, fers, fert, ferimus, fertis, ferunt; imperfect forms include ferebam, ferebas, ferebat, ferebamus, ferebatis, ferebant; the perfect is tuli, tulistī, tulit, tulimus, tulistis, tulerunt; and the future forms include feram, ferēs, feret, ferēmus, ferētis, ferent.

Compound usage: A distinctive feature of ferre is its productivity with prefixes to create many related verbs. Some well-known examples are referre (to bring back, report), conferre (to bring together, confer), offerre (to present, offer), efferre (to carry out, bring forth), inferre (to bring in, import), proferre (to bring forth, reveal), perferre (to bear through), differre (to carry away or delay). These compounds retain much of the sense of the base verb while adding directional or modal nuances.

See also: Latin grammar, irregular verbs, compound verbs with ferre, Latin etymology.