Debemus

Looks like a first person plural Latin verb--I think it means "We have to", but my Latin was long ago.

there's an online Latin dictionary, and it says "debeo" is "to owe, to be morally bound to, to be bound by" ("debeo" is first person singular, I think)

Present tense (praesens) of latin verb debere.

Debemus = we ought (also we must or we owe)

This member is also asking if a macron must appear over the second "e." This is a question which i cannot answer, and i've never known Latin to use diacritical marks, but perhaps George can answer this if he arrives. A marcon is what will be familiar to older Americans as a "long sign" placed over a vowel in phonetics text to indicate that the "long" pronunciation must be used.

debere, debeo, debui, debitum

Praesens: debeo, debes, debte, debemus, debetis, debent


I'd thought that the mentioning of "marcon" was just thought to be helpful for the pronunciation... today. (Though I've seen some medieval sources with marcons, too.)

That's what i would have thought, too, Walter--but i'm no Latin scholar, so i didn't want to say that.

I think Latin, at least at some periods and in some versions did in fact use the macron. As English speakers we habitually shorten unstressed vowels or turn them into schwas ("uh" sound), so we'd pronounce the first syllable of "debemus" like the first syllable of "debutante", whereas in languages like Spanish, which is a pretty direct descendant of Latin, they'd probably pronounce it like "day-bay-moose" (and we'd probably pronounce the last syllable of it as if it were the word "muss" )--(you can always tell an English speaker, no matter what other language it is he's messing up).

You wont find a macron in any (original) sources from Roman times.
Wikipedia

For instance,, "cohirere" was sometimes written either with a macron or an accent .... centuries later, only:

O di immortales!
A Latin discussion on A2K!


I think mendesc008 is telling us that he or she would have put a macron there.


I agree that it is the first person plural present indicative of "debeo".


Depends on the context.
The original meaning was "owe" or "be under obligation".
It came to mean "ought", accompanied by the infinitive of whatever it is one
ought to do. "Ire debemus" means "We ought to go."


(I never could get the hang of macrons.)

However, macaroons are very tasty!

Macarons too!