tolerabant

Tolerabant is a Latin verb form meaning “they were tolerating” or “they tolerated.” It is the imperfect active indicative of tolerare, a first-conjugation verb meaning to endure, bear, or tolerate. The imperfect tense expresses a past action that was ongoing or repeated, and the ending -abant marks the third person plural in this tense.

Morphology and usage notes: The form is built from the stem toler- plus the imperfect plural ending -abant, giving tolerabant for “they were tolerating.” The corresponding infinitive is tolerare, and related forms include tolero (I endure) and tolerans (tolerant). In Latin, tolerare can take a direct object in the accusative to denote what is endured, for example dolores (pains) or moras (delays). The imperfect tolerabant thus often conveys ongoing endurance of some hardship, delay, or objection, and can appear in narratives describing scenes of patient or persistent endurance.

Examples: Milites dolores tolerabant. (The soldiers were bearing pains.) Moram tolerabant. (They were bearing the delay.) In broader usage, tolerabant can describe enduring various conditions, hardships, or objections in past contexts.

See also: tolerare, tolero, tolerans, tolerabilia. These terms share the same semantic field of endurance, bearing, or tolerating, and appear across Latin literature from the Republic through late antique periods.