struo

From Proto-Italic *strowō, from Proto-Indo-European *strew- (“to strew, to spread out”). The stems of strūxī and strūctum (for the expected *strōvī and *strūtum) must be analogical on the model of fluō.^[1] Cognate with Old English strewian (English strew), Old Norse strá.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈstru.oː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈstruː.o]

struō (present infinitive struere, perfect active strūxī, supine strūctum); third conjugation

1. to place one thing on top of another, to pile up, join together

   Synonyms: cumulō, accumulō, exstruō, onerō, inaedificō, colligō

2. to compose, construct, build

   Synonyms: aedificō, exaedificō, inaedificō, cōnstituō, cōnstruō, condō, compōnō, fundō, statuō, exstruō, mōlior

3. (transferred) to ready, prepare, devise, design, contrive, arrange, plot, aim at, accomplish, to make or do a plan, purpose, intent, or course of action

   Synonyms: inveniō, māchinor, parō, comminīscor

   • 29 BCE – 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid 4.271:

     “Quid struis? Aut quā spē Libycīs teris ōtia terrīs?”

     “What do you think you are doing? Or with what [false] hope are you wasting idle hours in the lands of Libya?”
     (Aeneas is overseeing building projects in Carthage just as Mercury arrives to confront him; Mercury’s criticism, however, is less about the physical construction than it is about self-deception. Other translations: West, 1990: “What do you have in mind?”; Fagles, 2006: “What are you plotting now?”; Bartsch, 2020: “What’s your plan?”)

4. to place, arrange

   Synonyms: pōnō, collocō, locō, sistō, statuō, cōnstituō

5. to heap up, load with

   Synonym: acervō

In Classical texts, the only passive forms for this verb are the third-person singular and plural. Please note that there is a disagreement over whether the root vowel is short or long in the third and fourth principal parts and the verb forms based on these (strūxī for struxī and strūctum for structum).

• → Welsh: ystryw

• “struo”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “struo”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “struo”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894), Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to waylay a person: insidias alicui parare, facere, struere, instruere, tendere
    
• Sihler, Andrew L. (1995), New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN