videbant

Videbant is a Latin verb form meaning they were seeing or they used to see. It is the imperfect active indicative, 3rd person plural, of the verb videre (to see). The form is built from the present stem vid-, the imperfect marker -ēb-, plus the 3rd plural ending -ant, resulting in videbant. As with other imperfect forms, videbant expresses past action that was ongoing, repeated, or customary in the past.

In usage, videbant often conveys a background or setting in narrative, describing what the subjects were doing over a period of time. It can be translated with yet- or used-to in English, depending on context, for example: “the soldiers were seeing the horizon” or “the soldiers used to see the horizon.”

A typical Latin sentence using videbant might be: Puellae in horto arbores videbant, meaning “The girls were seeing the trees in the garden.” The form aligns with other imperfect forms of 2nd conjugation verbs like videre and shares the same imperfect endings: -bam, -bas, -bat, -bāmus, -bātis, -bant.

Notes: videbant is distinct from the perfect form vīdērunt (they saw) and from the present videant (they see). It belongs to the standard imperfect system of Latin and appears across classical authors to set past scenes and describe ongoing past perception.