Puella cilium claudit.

the girl

Breakdown of Puella cilium claudit.

• claudere: to close
• cilium: the eyelid

Questions & Answers about Puella cilium claudit.

Why is puella the subject of the sentence?

Puella is in the nominative singular, which is the case normally used for the subject of a sentence.

Here, puella means girl, and its ending -a is the regular nominative singular ending for many first-declension nouns.

So in Puella cilium claudit, puella is the one doing the action.

What case is cilium, and why?

Cilium is in the accusative singular, which is the case typically used for the direct object.

The verb claudit means closes, so something is being closed. That thing is cilium, so it appears in the accusative.

A useful detail:

• cilium is a neuter noun
• in many neuter nouns, the nominative and accusative singular look the same

So cilium could look like either nominative or accusative by form alone, but in this sentence it functions as the direct object.

Why does claudit end in -t?

The ending -t shows that the verb is third person singular in the present tense.

So claudit means:

• he closes
• she closes