Cloaca stillicidium recipit.

Here, cloaca is the subject and stillicidium is the direct object.

A good first pass is:

• cloaca = the thing doing the action
• stillicidium = the thing being received
• recipit = receives / takes in

In Latin, case endings usually tell you the job of each noun more than word order does.

Because stillicidium is a neuter noun.

For neuter nouns in Latin:

• nominative singular and accusative singular are the same
• nominative plural and accusative plural are also the same

So stillicidium can be either nominative singular or accusative singular in form. In this sentence, it is understood as accusative singular, because it is the thing that the drain receives.

This is a very common Latin pattern, so it is worth getting used to early.

Recipit is:

• 3rd person singular
• present tense
• active voice
• indicative mood

It comes from the dictionary form:

• recipio, recipere, recepi, receptum

So recipit means he/she/it receives, takes in, or sometimes is receiving, depending on context.

In this sentence, the subject is cloaca, which is grammatically singular, so the verb is singular too.

The ending -it tells you that the verb is 3rd person singular present active.

So recipit means:

• he receives
• she receives
• it receives

Since cloaca is the subject, the natural English subject is it.

An English speaker may be tempted to over-focus on the ending because it looks unusual, but in Latin verb endings are doing a lot of grammatical work.

Because Latin usually does not need an expressed subject pronoun when the verb ending already tells you the person and number.

So recipit already contains the idea of he/she/it receives.

Latin can add a pronoun for emphasis, but normally it leaves it out.

In this sentence, cloaca names the subject, so there is even less need for a separate pronoun.

Latin has no articles.

That means there is no separate word that exactly equals English the or a/an.

So:

• cloaca can mean a drain or the drain
• stillicidium can mean a dripping / drip-water or the dripping / the drip-water

You choose the best English article from the context.

• cloaca is a 1st-declension feminine noun
• stillicidium is a 2nd-declension neuter noun

Some useful forms:

cloaca, cloacae

• nominative singular: cloaca
• accusative singular: cloacam

stillicidium, stillicidii

• nominative singular: stillicidium
• accusative singular: stillicidium
• nominative/accusative plural: stillicidia

That second noun is a good example of the neuter rule mentioned above.

Latin often puts the verb at or near the end of the sentence, so subject-object-verb is very common:

• Cloaca = subject
• stillicidium = object
• recipit = verb

But Latin word order is much freer than English word order.

So other arrangements are possible, such as:

• Stillicidium cloaca recipit
• Recipit cloaca stillicidium

The basic meaning can stay the same, though the emphasis may shift.

So the ending position of recipit is normal, but not mandatory.

Not necessarily.

The verb is built from capio (take) with the prefix re-, but compound verbs often develop meanings that are not fully literal every time.

Recipio can mean things like:

• receive
• take back
• take in
• admit
• recover

In this sentence, the natural meaning is receives or takes in, not specifically takes back.

So it is better to learn the compound verb as its own vocabulary item, not just as a mechanical sum of parts.

In a text without macrons, the spelling can look ambiguous.

For a 1st-declension noun:

• nominative singular: cloaca
• ablative singular: cloacā

If macrons are omitted, both appear as cloaca in writing.

But in this sentence, cloaca is understood as the nominative subject, because the syntax and meaning require a subject that receives something.

So yes, the bare spelling could match an ablative form in some contexts, but not here.

It can be read as either, depending on context.

Latin present tense can express:

• an action happening now
• a habitual action
• a general truth or regular function

So recipit here may mean:

• is receiving right now, or
• receives / takes in as a normal function

With a sentence like this, the general or habitual sense is often very natural: the drain receives the dripping water as part of what it does.