Safe and Sound

Most of you Latin students will have come across the 3rd-declension adjective incolumis, meaning ‘safe after danger’ or ‘uninjured’. There is also an adjective columis, though you won’t find it in your dictionary. Instead of meaning the opposite of incolumis, however, it means essentially the same thing, i.e. ‘whole, sound, safe’ and is most likely derived from the Greek ὁλος (‘whole, sound’), as the initial c of columis was no doubt originally a letter with an h sound (cf. Latin ceterus for Greek ἑτερος). There is also a noun incolumitas: ‘safety, preservation’.