Today's latin word of the day is:
certus, -a, -um, n. certain, fixed
Certus is an adjective, which is why it has -a -um in it's definition. An adjective has to agree with the noun in number, case and gender. If we have seruus certus est, it translates as 'the slave was certain.' Note that seruus in this case is specifically referring to a male slave. Certus and seruus need to agree, so they're both nominative, singular, masculine. Nominative is the subject of our sentence(accusative being the object). What if a slave woman were to hit our certain male salve? We would have something like serua verberat seruum certum. Notice that since seruus certus, our fixed slave, is in the accusative now. The masculine singular accusative ending is -um, giving us seruum certum. Nota bene! This is the same as the singular nominative for the neuter! You will run in to these overlaps every so often in latin and they can be very confusing. You will have to intuit and draw clues from the surrounding text to find the intended meaning. Finally, I give you a link to the Perseus Project page for certus. It has far more detail regarding the word than what I have already covered.
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