Latin conjugation

In linguistics and grammar, conjugation has two basic meanings.^[1] One meaning is the creation of derived forms of a verb from basic forms, or principal parts.

The second meaning of the word conjugation is a group of verbs which all have the same pattern of inflections. Thus all those Latin verbs which in the present tense have 1st singular -ō, 2nd singular -ās, and infinitive -āre are said to belong to the 1st conjugation, those with 1st singular -eō, 2nd singular -ēs and infinitive -ēre belong to the 2nd conjugation, and so on. The number of conjugations of regular verbs is usually said to be four.

The word "conjugation" comes from the Latin coniugātiō, a calque of the Greek συζυγία (syzygia), literally "yoking together (horses into a team)".

For examples of verbs and verb groups for each inflectional class, see the Wiktionary appendix pages for first conjugation, second conjugation, third conjugation, and fourth conjugation.