Subjunctive of Eo, Fero, Volo, Nolo, and Malo

Five extremely common Latin verbs look irregular in the present system: eō, īre, iī/īvī, itum “go”; ferō, ferre, tulī, lātum “carry, bring, bear”; volō, velle, voluī “want”; nōlō, nōlle, nōluī “not want”; and mālō, mālle, māluī “prefer.” Their subjunctives become manageable once you separate the tense stems. The present and imperfect preserve special present-system shapes; the perfect and pluperfect follow normally from the third principal part.

These paradigms are (neutral Classical). Ferō has active and passive forms. The other four are normally active only; eō can appear impersonally in passive expressions such as eātur “let there be a going,” but learners should not invent personal passive meanings such as “I am gone.”

If the regular present pattern is not yet familiar, review Present Subjunctive: Formation before learning these stems.

Present subjunctive paradigms

The present forms use eā-, ferā-, veli-, nōli-, and māli-. The first two take the familiar endings of regular present subjunctives; the last three have i before the personal endings.

Eāmus is hortatory; ferat stands in a requested ut clause; velim is a courteous independent subjunctive (polite/neutral Classical). English translates them differently, but all three are morphologically present subjunctive.

The relationship among volō, nōlō, and mālō

The three verbs of willing belong together historically and synchronically. Nōlō combines a negative element with volō (“I do not want”), while mālō expresses choosing one option more (“I prefer”). Their present subjunctives share the sequence -li-:

Velim, nōlim, and mālim often soften a statement of will, so English “would like / would not like / would rather” is natural. That politeness is a use of the present subjunctive, not a special conditional tense. Latin has no morphological tense named “conditional.”

The comparison after mālō commonly uses quam: mālim manēre quam abīre “I would rather stay than leave.” It can also coordinate parallel complements without quam in some contexts, but keeping the alternatives explicit is clearest in prose.

Imperfect subjunctives: use the infinitive shape

The imperfect subjunctive is built transparently from the present active infinitive plus personal endings. Because these infinitives are irregular, the results preserve their recognizable shapes.

English “preferred” and “to carry” do not tell you how to build the Latin. Secondary sequence after rogāvit and imperāvit motivates imperfect subjunctives māllem and ferrent. The endings then identify first-person singular and third-person plural respectively.

The same form also appears in a present contrary-to-fact condition:

Here māllem is first-person singular imperfect subjunctive. The -m marks its finite person; the infinitive mālle has no person ending.

Perfect and pluperfect: the irregularity changes stems

Perfect-system subjunctives use the third principal part. Once the correct stem is selected, formation is regular.

The shorter perfect forms of eō are common; spelling and scansion vary across authors. Learn the principal parts as a set rather than trying to derive tul- from English “carried” or from present fer-.

Ierint is perfect subjunctive, third-person plural; tulisset is pluperfect subjunctive, third-person singular. They mark anterior action under primary and secondary leading verbs respectively.

Voice: ferō is the important exception

Ferō forms a present passive subjunctive regularly from ferā- plus passive endings: ferar, ferāris, ferātur, ferāmur, ferāminī, ferantur. Its imperfect passive is ferrer, ferrēris, ferrētur, and so forth. Perfect passive forms use lātus plus the subjunctive of sum.

The subjects cibus and captīvī receive the action. The other four verbs on this page do not supply comparable personal passive paradigms.

Parsing diagnostics

Use three questions:

1. Which stem is visible: present eā-, ferā-, veli-, nōli-, māli- or perfect i-/īv-, tul-, volu-, nōlu-, mālu-?
2. Which ending marks person, number, voice, and mood?
3. What construction selects the subjunctive, and what time relationship does it express?

Common Mistakes

1. Copying the indicative stem of volō

2. Dropping an l from the imperfect subjunctive of mālō

3. Using the present stem in the perfect system

4. Missing passive voice with ferō

Key Takeaways

Anchor the present forms as eam, feram, velim, nōlim, and mālim. Build imperfects from īre, ferre, velle, nōlle, and mālle. For the perfect system, switch decisively to i-/īv-, tul-, volu-, nōlu-, and mālu-. Only ferō has a full personal passive, and English wording never replaces the need to identify the Latin stem first.