venimus

Venimus is a Latin verb form derived from venire, meaning to come or to arrive. It functions as the first-person plural in two tenses: the present indicative active, where it translates as “we come,” and the perfect indicative active, where it translates as “we came.” The infinitive of the verb is venire, and the principal parts are venio, venire, veni, ventum. Because Latin sometimes uses identical spellings for different tenses, venimus can appear as either a present or a perfect form depending on context.

Etymology and cognates: Venire is a common Latin verb of the fourth conjugation. Its form shares a lineage with related verbs in Romance languages, such as Italian venire and Spanish venir, all tracing back to the same Proto-Italic root. In Latin, venire and its descendants served to express movement toward the speaker or toward a destination, among other uses.

Usage and nuance: In classical Latin, venimus as present indicates ongoing action: “we come.” When read as the perfect, it must be translated as a past action: “we came.” Context, sentence structure, and accompanying verbs typically clarify the tense. Like many Latin first-person plural forms, venimus can appear with little or no explicit subject, since the verb ending already specifies the person and number.

Examples: Venimus ad portam. (We are coming/We come to the gate.) Venimus ex cena, velut heri. (We came from dinner, as yesterday.) Without surrounding tense markers, the form remains potentially ambiguous, underscoring the importance of context in Latin syntax.

Overall, venimus is a standard, versatile form in Latin verb conjugation, illustrating how a single spelling can encode different temporal meanings.