ponere

Ponere is a Latin verb meaning to place, put, or lay. It is a transitive verb and serves as the basic building block for many constructions and compounds in Latin, as well as for a wide range of English borrowings and Romance-language cognates based on the same root.

Grammatically, ponere belongs to the third conjugation. Its principal parts are ponō, ponere, posuī, positum. These expose the verb’s stem changes across tenses and voices: present indicative forms include ponō, pones, ponit, ponimus, ponitis, ponunt; the imperfect uses forms such as ponēbam, ponēbās, ponēbat, etc.; the future appears as ponam, ponēs, ponet, ponēmus, ponētis, ponent. The supine is positum, and the perfect passive participle is positus. The verb governs a direct object in the accusative (what is placed) and a location phrase—often in the ablative with in or on, or in the accusative with a noun of motion—describing where the thing is placed.

Etymology and derivatives: ponere comes from Proto-Italic and is the source of numerous Latin compounds and English derivatives. English vocabulary built on the pon- root includes impose, deposit, position, exponent, exposition, and compounding forms such as supponere and componere. Many Romance languages retain equivalents of ponere in verbs meaning to place or set, reflecting the verb’s broad semantic field.

In usage, ponere appears in a wide range of classical contexts—from literal placement of objects to figurative uses such as to place a case or to set forth an argument (ponere causam, expono). Its ubiquity makes it a foundational verb for studying Latin syntax and philology.