Talk:A maiore ad minus

maiore - maiori

A quick Google search shows that this expression is sometimes spelled a maiori ad minus, e.g., in the Wikipedia article Talmudical Hermeneutics (and probably in the Jewish Encyclopedia article from which it was copied). Wheelock's Latin (6th ed, p. 172) says that comparative adjectives, unlike other adjectives in the i-stem third declension, do not end in -i in the ablative singular. Was maiori a mistake, or had it become standard by the time the expression was commonly used in philosophical discussions? Should we mention the alternate spelling here, quietly redirect it to this article, or leave things as they are? This same question also applies to the article A minore ad maius. Peter Chastain (talk) 08:59, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I did some googling and it appears that a maiori could be a mistake from Medieval Latin that occasionally gets repeated. According to this page, the medievals often mistakenly used the dative when the ablative was called for, and some of these expressions have persisted, like a priori and a posteriori. I'm guessing that this is also how a fortiori originated. I don't really know, though, and I'd love to see a more authoritative source. I've been exploring the literature surrounding a fortiori recently, and I get the impression that a maiore either didn't get corrupted by the medievals or got restored afterward. Cicero wrote in §23 of Topica, "Quod in re maiore valet valeat in minore." That's not quite a maiore, but it's definitely an ablative singular and it's about the topic of the present article. So, I think a maiore is the way to go. But definitely yes, if we can find an authoritative source for it, we should include a note about the medieval grammatical confusion and its aftermath. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 00:34, 31 October 2014 (UTC)