What Latin phrase would you use to say, for example, “the smoke was blown away by the wind”?
Bumpus.
My Latin is very rusty, but I’ve tried for a little alliteration:
Ventus vapores evacuvit.
Ventus = wind, vapores = smoke, evacuvit = blew away / purged.
I’m not sure if I’ve declined it all correctly.
Using the wonderful resources at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, I found the following lines from Lucretius’s De rerum natura (loosely, ‘On Nature’):
principio pars terrai non nulla, perusta
solibus adsiduis, multa pulsata pedum vi,
pulveris exhalat nebulam nubesque volantis,
quas validi toto dispergunt aëre venti.
William Leonard’s translation:
By unremitting suns, and trampled on
By a vast throng of feet, exhale abroad
A powdery haze and flying clouds of dust,
Which the stout winds disperse in the whole air
“exhale” is exhalo, exhalare, exhalavi, exhalatum
“disperse” is dispergo, dispergi, dispergere, dispersum
It looks like diffugio, diffugi, diffugere, diffusum (fly asunder, flee in different directions, scatter, disperse) would also work; it’s used of snow.
To complete Dr. Drake’s excellent analysis, “blown away” would specifically be dispersus, a type of adjective which depends on the gender/number of the thing described as “blown away” (e.g. nubes est dispersus - “The smoke is blown away”, but Harena est dispersa - “The sand is blown away”). IMO this is the right word.