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Of all words ending in -ter that arise from the dual, uter seems most puzzling in its formation. Clearly it should be cuter (old *quoteros, Att. πότερος, Ion. κότερος, Skt. kataras), and we do find in inscriptions necuter (C.I.L. vi. 1527. 64), as well as necubi, sicubi, necunde, alicunde. Neuter, says Sommer, is a later formation, developed after the change of the old *cuter to uter (Lat. L. & F. Lehre, p. 469). Either, says Brugmann, we have a wrong division into nec-uter, nec-ubi, &c., aided by the presence of a uter ‘one of the two’, which appears as ater in Old Slavic, or the initial cu- was altered to u by internal phonetic change (Vg. Gr. II², 2. 346.3). What this phonetic change may be Brugmann does not specify.

What is the relation between quis ‘who?’, and quis ‘any one’? Clearly they are originally one and the same word; but quis ‘who?’ has an acute accent, which quis ‘any one’ has lost. The change is old; for the same is true for the Greek τίς and τις. We have already noticed how ali- in aliquis lost its force. So numquis hoc dixit? plainly meant to begin with: ‘now who has said this?’. The strong phrase accent on the first word is analogous to the strong initial stress accent on aliteros, which led to the loss of i and changed the word to alter; and in like fashion the quis in the second place is weakened in meaning and accent, and we get: ‘Now has any one said this?’. Quis thus reduced becomes an enclitic, as we find it in aliquis and ecquis.

The -uter in neuter does not mean ‘which of the two’, but ‘either’. So with the uter in uterque ‘either soever’; but uter standing alone is usually ‘which of the two’. Still, when we have uter repeated, the second does not mean ‘which of the two’, but seems to be the uter which Brugmann identifies with the old Slavic ater, meaning the same as alter. For in: quaerere ... uter utri insidias fecerit (Cic. Mil. 23.9) or: ambigitur ... uter utro sit prior (Hor. Ep. 2. 1. 55) the second uter has the same force as it has in: neuter utri invidet (Pl. Stich. 733); and we have a very close parallel to: si quis quid contra rempublicam fecerit. So to the Roman the second uter (=alter) might seem to bear the same relation to the first uter (=cuter), as quid here bears to quis. And so from the proportion quis? : quis :: cuter : uter we should get the use of uter for ‘which of the two?’, as well as for ‘the other of the two’.

Cuter was for quo-ter ‘which of the two?’; but the u in uter is a reduction of the ve- that we find as vi- in viginti, as the dual vau in Sanskrit, and as the plural vos and ‘we’ in Latin and English. It appears in the Skt. ubhau ‘both’; and uter is ‘one of the two’, while alter is rather ‘one of yon two’. We have, then, in alteruter very much such a reduplication as we have in quisquis; and in: omnium controversiarum, quae essent inter aratorem et decumanum, si uter velit, edicit se recuperatores daturum (Cic. Verr. 2. 3. 35. 14) uter seems short for alteruter. Quintilian tells us: de praemiis quaeruntur duo: ... ex duobus uter dignior; ex pluribus quis dignissimus (7.4. 21). So far as I know uter is used only of two persons or things, or of two parties or sets, as in: aliquando utrimque sunt testes, et quaestio sequitur, ex ipsis: utri meliores viri (Quint. 5. 7. 34). Unlike alter, uter is a dying word in later Latinity, and quis tends to take its place; as is plain from: quos igitur anteferret (Ann. 1. 47.2).

In uterque the -que is worth a note. I have no doubt that in origin it is the same -que that we have in geminusque Pollux. From qui (=how?), the accented locative of quis?, we get an indefinite qui ‘somehow’, just as from quis? we get quis ‘some one’. Ribbeck saw that we had this qui in a weakened form in neque (=nequi ‘no how’); but he distinguished that que from the conjunction que, and thought of: neque opes neque arma habebant as involving an asyndeton. But in: hostium currus arma castra cepit we have an older syntax than in: hostium currus et arma et castra cepit; for et as a conjunction is late, and never developed in Greek, where ἔτι remains the adverb. But que, Greek τε, Skt. ca, is very old. When we remember, however, that ut is primarily ‘how?’ and que, ‘somehow’, and compare Cicero’s use of ut in: cum machinatione quadam aliquid moveri videmus, ut sphaeram, ut horas, ut alia permulta (N.D. 2. 97. 38), with the use of que in:

Captivi pendent currus curvaeque secures . . .

Spiculaque clipeique ereptaque rostra carinis (Aen. 7. 184 and 186),

we feel that in the examples cited both ut and que are conjunctions with meanings closely allied.

Que, then, in uterque will mean ‘somehow’ or ‘soever’ and uterque ‘one of the two soever’ or ‘either of the two’. We have in Horace’s: mihi cumque salve rite vocanti (Od. 1. 32. 15) cumque for ‘whensoever’, and in: indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus (A.P. 359) quandoque with the same sense. And we have cumque used as the corresponding indefinite ‘at any time soever’ in:

Contemplator enim cum solis lumina cumque

Inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum (Lucr. 2. 114-5),

‘observe, pray, when at any time the sun’s rays are admitted, and pour their light through the shaded chambers’. Munro feels that cum ... cumque is for quandocumque and means ‘whenever’. No doubt it was in this meaning that cumque was subjoined to quando, and it was in this union that it got the force of ‘soever’ instead of the older ‘whenever’, in which meaning it usually takes the place of the simpler que in later Latin. In this sense it is subjoined to uter ‘which of the two’, while to uter (=alter) it is que that is subjoined.

Uterque is, then, originally ‘either’ rather than ‘both’, and it seems that the meaning ‘both’ was evolved from double uses such as we find in: quia uterque utrique est cordi (Ter. Phorm. 800) or: cum uterque utrique esset exercitus in conspectu (B.G. 7. 35). It was easy and usual to omit the second uterque, as in: eodem die uterque eorum ex castris stativis ... (utrumque) exercitum educunt (B.C. 3. 30.3), where the eorum pluralizes the verb, and with the omission of utrumque uterque assumes the force of ‘both’. With this meaning it is used in the singular for two individuals, and in the plural for two classes, but in poetry it is often used in the plural for individual objects, as in: palmas utrasque (Aen. 6. 685). Vossius (ad Vell. 2. 34.3) notices the use in archaic Latin of uter for uterque, as in: utris summo studio pugnantibus (Quadrig. apud Gell. 9. 13.8), probably a use of uter for alteruter.

Neuter, a trisyllable according to Priscian, is ne+uter (= alter). It is joined with a following utri (=alteri) in: neuter utri invidet (Pl. Stich. 731); but oftener with a following alter, as in: neutra alteri official (Quint, 1. 1. 14), and Quintilian’s usage shows that his Latin is not neuter neutrum diligit, but neuter alterum diligit; following which most editors have changed utri to alteri in the verse of Plautus cited above. Like alter it soon passes on from two to three, designating usually an excluded third, as in: quid bonum sit, quid malum, quid neutrum (Cic. Div. 2. 10.4). In this use it comes to designate the neuter gender and the neuter verb; and by an easy and usual abbreviation we have neutra verba for verba neutrius generis, and neuter anguis (Cic. Div. 2. 62. 29), i.e. anguis nec mas, nec femina. In this new use its genitive is no longer neutrius, but neutri. This passage to a meaning that obscures its relation to alter is easy; and in this meaning it often ceases to have any connexion with two or more, passing to a singular sense.

Noster and vester by their ending -ter designate an opposition of ‘ours’ to ‘yours’ and vice versa, analogous to that felt in meum and tuum. Their use for a single person is apparently to be connected with the plurals of Modesty and Majesty. Noster standing with a proper name seems short for vir nostri ordinis, or for nostras, as in: quisquis es ... noster eris (Aen. 2. 149-50); or for nobis favens (cf. suus), as in: sin nostrum adnuerit nobis victoria Martem (12. 187). Horace’s use of noster for ego in: per totum hoc tempus subiectior in diem et horam invidiae noster (Sat. 2. 6. 47-8), Acron explains: verba invidorum refert; but in: minime istuc faciet noster Daemones (Pl. Rud. 1245), we should rather say: ‘your friend Daemones’. We have already spoken of the use of vos for tu; in Ov. Her. 19. 62 Burmann reads: pectora nunc iuncto vestra fovere sinu, where vestra would be for tua; but A.Palmer reads nostra. In: crimen amor vestrum (Aen. 10. 188) vestrum seems of Cupid and Venus, though Servius says that some took vestrum for tuum.

Superum is related to super as is alterum to aliter. It seems to have lost much of its comparative force in such uses as: omnes supera alta tenentes (Aen. 6. 787), or: supera ardua linquens (7.562); and it is easy to understand the formation from such uses of the double comparative superior, just as the use of inferi for the underworld would lead to the use of inferior for Tartara. Super is a comparative from sub (=ex upo), meaning either ‘from beneath’ (i.e. up), or ‘beneath’. With the accusative super is the opposite of subter; but with the ablative it often loses its comparative force, becoming equivalent to de, and losing all idea of ‘two’. Subter is both the preposition opposed to super, and the adverb opposed to supra.

While extra, intra, citra, ultra offer nothing of interest here, contra (=quom-tra) ‘to what extent on the other side’, and so ‘facing’ or ‘over against’, at times loses its force of opposition, and passes to ‘before’ or ‘to’. We read in the Vulgate: peccatum meum contra me est semper (Psal. 51.3), and: flens orare contra Caesarem coepit (Bell. Alex. 24.3).

It is to the doubtful point of division in a word like posterus that Sommer attributes the rise of the ending -teros out of the older -eros. Probably this -eros was subjoined to poste, the opposite of ante (older postid and antid); the root pos- is plain in *posne, later pone, and so -teros here came to be regarded as the comparative ending. Words like ἀριστερός from ἄριστος, which gave rise by analogy to δεξιτερός instead of the older δεξιός, would aid in this development. Of the pair dexter and sinister in Latin, the origin of the former seems clear: it is the welcoming hand (cf. δέχομαι) as well as the hand with which the orator gesticulates (cf. δείκνυμι); my old teacher, Studemund, thought that sinistra marked the hand the speaker held in sinu; and I know of no other probable etymology.

‘Accompanying you’ and ‘at your side’ (sequos) gives the sequester (=sequent-ter). On the analogy of this term of local significance we get words like equester and pedester, paluster and campester; terraster, rurester in Apuleius, and tellustris in Capella. Sommer thinks that positives like agrestis and caelestis helped to extend this formation, The ending -iester seems reduced to -ister in magister, minister, and sinister; that the last is of late development is indicated by its double comparative sinisterior, which probably follows deterior in formation.

What of words like poetaster? Beside the avunculus or ‘little grandfather’, the elder brother who at the father’s death took his place as the protector of the sister and her children, we have his wife the matertera (=matritera, Walde) or ‘second mother’, who takes the place of the sister, should she die; and should this happen, the filia is the filiatera or filiatra of the matertera. On the analogy of words in -aster and -ister the son would now be the filiaster of the uncle, who in turn would be his patraster—neither the son nor the father in the full sense of the term. So we get calvaster ‘tending to baldness’ and surdaster ‘tending to deafness’, pilaster, oleaster, lotaster, poetaster. Our mulatto and the French mulâtre testify to a Low Latin mulaster. We read in Plautus’s Epidicus: sed quis haec est muliercula et ille gravastellus qui venit (v.620). Festus gives this reading, but in another part of his compendium he cites the word as ravistellus—perhaps the oldest variant on record for Latin literature. Gravastellus is evidently a diminutive from gravaster ‘the man turning grey’; while ravistellus is a like diminutive from ravister, a pejorative of ravus ‘gray’ following the analogy of minister. We see that beside ravus, the classical form, there existed an older gravus, German grau, our ‘grey’. And so it is possible to think of Roma as a later development of groma, as lactis is probably for an older *glactos. This is confirmed when we compare Nova Carthago (Aen. 1. 366) with Roma quadrata. Nova Carthago in the verse cited is the old, not the new, Carthage; and the epithet novus is joined with it here because the word Carthage itself meant New Town. So perhaps quadrata is joined with Roma, because Roma was itself the ‘square’ of the gromaticus.