3rd Declension Adjectives

What are third declension adjectives?You may remember that when we learnt about ‘-us, -a, -um’ adjectives, we mentioned that there were two main types of adjective in Latin – This is the second type! Whereas ‘-us, -a, -um’ adjectives had either 1st or 2nd declension endings depending on the gender of the noun they agreed with (1st declension for feminine, 2nd declension for masculine, 2nd declension neuter for neuter), third declension adjectives have (not surprisingly) third declension endings!

The below are all third declension adjectives, some just have a different nominative singular ending for the different grammatical genders. Remember the neuter rule though!


Three ending: celer, celeris, celere - quick
Two ending: facilis, facile - easy
One ending: ferox, ferocis - fierce