Disputatio Categoriae:Artes martiales

Hand-to-hand fighting?

to fight hand to hand is in Latin pugnare comminus. How to translate into Latin hand-to-hand fighting? Is comminor an adjective derived from the adverb comminus? --08:48, 4 Martii 2010 Usor:212.182.71.98

Hello usor anonymus. You seem to be asking two questions. pugnare comminus looks good to me, but maybe pugilare would be even better? On second thought, maybe that's redundant.

Your second questions I don't understand well. comminor is not an adjective but a verb (at least I can't find it as an adjective) related to minor. Given that minor means "threaten" and comminus means "hand-to-hand", I don't see an immediate relation. Rather it would seem that comminus stems from manus with a vowel reduction due to prefixation, literally "together handedly".

--Ioscius^∞ 09:05, 4 Martii 2010 (UTC)

Not sure whether this helps with an answer, but: comminus being a one-off adverb formed by compounding, it isn't possible to form an adjective from it. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:00, 4 Martii 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps one should not translate 'fight hand to hand' as a noun (hand-to-hand fighting). What's idiomatic in Latin (and other languages) doesn't always match the syntax of English. When you look up a noun in an English-Latin dictionary (like Cassell's), you'll sometimes find only the suggestion "translate as verb." ¶ As has been said, comminor is a verb, derived from minor 'I project, threaten, menace'; comminus, however, according to Cassell's, is related to manus 'hand'. IacobusAmor 12:54, 4 Martii 2010 (UTC)