mensurare

Mensurare is a Latin verb meaning to measure or to determine the extent, size, or quantity of something. In classical Latin, it denotes the act of measurement and is used with a direct object to express what is being measured—lengths, areas, volumes, distances, or other quantities. As the infinitive form of a first-conjugation verb, mensurare appears in many Latin texts in contexts ranging from practical surveying to mathematical description and legal or architectural discussion.

The noun mensura, derived from the same root, denotes a measure or the act of measuring, and from this noun English terms such as measurement and mensuration ultimately descend. The verb yields various participial and nominal forms that appear in scholarly discussions of metrology and geometry, contributing to the vocabulary of measurement in Latin and its descendants.

In modern scholarship, mensurare is primarily of philological and historical interest as an example of a classical 1st-conjugation verb. It is not commonly used in everyday Latin prose, which tends to employ more specialized verbs for specific senses of measurement.

See also: Mensura; Mensuration; Metrology; Measurement; Latin grammar.