Future Active Participle

The future active participle presents a noun as going to perform an action: ventūrus “about to come,” scrīptūra “intending to write.” Its voice is active, its time is normally subsequent to the time of its clause, and its adjectival ending agrees with the person or thing expected to act.

The participle is especially common with sum, where it forms the active periphrastic and expresses intention, readiness, imminence, or a future viewed from another time. All unlabelled patterns below are normal Classical prose. Teaching forms have macrons; Suetonius’ words are quoted without adding them.

Formation: The Fourth Principal Part Plus -ūrus

Begin with the fourth principal part in -um, remove that ending, and add -ūrus, -ūra, -ūrum. The result declines like bonus, bona, bonum.

Irregular fourth principal parts produce correspondingly irregular-looking participles: ferō, ferre, tulī, lātum gives lātūrus “going to carry”; veniō, venīre, vēnī, ventum gives ventūrus “going to come.” Forms of sum use futūrus “going to be.” Learning the principal parts remains necessary.

In the first, feminine nominative scrīptūra agrees with Lūcia and governs accusative epistulam. In the second, masculine nominative plural ventūrī agrees with mīlitēs. The participle is an adjective in agreement and a verb in its internal syntax.

Subsequent Time Is Relative

The future participle’s action follows the reference time supplied by the containing clause. That reference time can itself be past, present, or future.

The departure comes after the past farewell, though both events lie in the past from the speaker’s viewpoint.

The English future varies: “was about to,” “are going to,” and “will be about to.” Latin keeps the participle’s relative relation and changes the finite verb when needed. Never equate future participle with one absolute English future tense.

Minimal contrast shows all three participial time relations:

Present active loquēns is simultaneous; perfect passive vocātus is normally anterior; future active locūtūrus is subsequent and active. The finite intrat stays present in all three.

The Active Periphrastic with Sum

Future active participle plus sum is called the active periphrastic. It does more than assert neutral futurity. According to context, it can foreground intention (“intend to”), readiness (“stand ready to”), imminence (“be about to”), or a future viewed from a past reference point (“was going to”).

In factūrus es, the masculine singular ending addresses a male; to a female, quid factūra es? Agreement belongs to the participle, while es marks second-person singular present. In cāsūra erat, feminine cāsūra agrees with urbs, and imperfect erat supplies the past viewpoint.

Context must decide among intention, imminence, and simple prospective time. A city does not “intend” to fall, so cāsūra erat is prospective. A speaker who says solūtūrus eram can have an intention. This is semantic reasoning, not an optional stylistic nuance.

The active periphrastic is normal in (formal) prose and direct speech preserved in literary texts. It is not intrinsically poetic. Still, Latin often uses an ordinary future indicative when there is no reason to emphasize intention or prospective viewpoint: crās veniam simply means “I shall come tomorrow.”

In Indirect Statement

The future active participle plus infinitive esse forms the future active infinitive. Because the subject of indirect statement is accusative, the participle is also accusative.

Feminine singular adventūram agrees with Cornēliam; masculine plural captūrōs agrees with hostēs. The future action is subsequent to intellegō or putābant, not automatically subsequent to speech time. In the second example, the expected capture may now be long past.

Latin can omit esse in sustained indirect discourse (literary/formal) when the construction remains clear. Learners should include it until the syntax is secure. The full system is treated on Future Active Infinitive.

Deponents and Substantival Use

Deponent verbs form future active participles normally from the stem represented by their perfect participle, the last principal part in their dictionary entry: proficīscor, proficīscī, profectus sum gives profectūrus “going to set out”; loquor, loquī, locūtus sum gives locūtūrus “going to speak.” The relationship is not exceptionless: morior, morī, mortuus sum has future moritūrus, not a mechanically invented form from mortuus. Although deponent finite forms are passive-looking, their future active participles have the same active future meaning as those of ordinary verbs.

A future participle can be substantival, with its noun understood: moritūrī “those about to die.” This use is most at home in compressed (formal/literary) language.

Suetonius reports the salutation of men assigned to a staged naval spectacle (Claudius 21.6):

Nominative masculine plural moritūrī is substantival and serves as the subject of salūtant. The line is an exceptional reported address, not evidence for a universal gladiatorial greeting; its cultural setting and register matter. Morphologically, however, it clearly displays subsequent action: the speakers salute before the anticipated dying.

Common Mistakes

Building the form from the present stem

Ignoring agreement in indirect statement

Treating future time as absolute

Omitting sum from an active periphrastic

Key Takeaways

• Form the future active participle from the supine or perfect-participle stem plus -ūrus, -ūra, -ūrum, checking dictionary-listed exceptions such as moritūrus.
• It agrees with the participant that will act and normally places its action after the clause’s reference time.
• With sum it forms the active periphrastic, often emphasizing intention, imminence, or prospective viewpoint.
• With infinitive esse and accusative agreement, it forms the future active infinitive in indirect statement.