S A T O R: sower, planter; founder, progenitor (usu.

divine); originator

A R E P O: creep/move stealthily towards, steal up; feel one's way, worm one's way (trust)

T E N E T: holds, keeps; comprehends; possesses; masters; preserves; supports

O P E R A: work, care; aid; service, effort, trouble; fortification

R O T A S: (as a noun) wheels; or (as a verb) whirl round, revolve, rotate

(Translation courtesy of Words by William Whitaker)

This becomes broadly transliterated as:

SATOR, AREPO: I the creator god, stealthily advancing toward, am

TENET: he who holds

OPERA: the world stage (or "work of care") which

ROTAS: you spin.

Loosely, this could mean: I, the creator god, subtly nearing you as you grow older, am he who holds the
cycle of life you live.

[. . .]

The most plausible explanation for the sator square's existence is that the Latin language was likely
originally built around it rather than vice versa. Because Latin dates as early as 75 BC and Old Latin even
older, the sator square apparently is older than the Christian religion.

Breaking it down, with the help of Mr. Whitaker's excellent program:

sator is a nominative singular noun and nothing else; this makes it, of course, the subject of the
sentence. It means 'sower, progenitor, originator'. So we have our subject:

The sower

What's he doing? If this is a proper sentence there must be a verb in here somewhere. All the other
words in the sentence might be verbs, so let's take them one by one. arrepo can be a verb, but it comes
from ad, 'toward', and repere, 'creep'. Its ending indicates that it's in the first person singular, so it
translates to 'I creep towards'—but we already have a subject, sator, so the speaker can't be the subject
of the sentence. So this is not our verb, and as it has no other possible meanings, we guess that it's a
proper name:

Arepo the sower

What about tenet? This is a third person singular present indicative active verb, which is a long way of
saying that it means 'he holds'. (Other translations are possible, but all are similar enough that 'hold' will
do for now.) Do we have our verb? Maybe. It matches the subject in number, and it's an indicative active
verb, which is what usually goes with the subject of a sentence. Let's look at the others first.

opera, when it's a verb, is second person singular present imperative active. It's an order, telling
someone to 'work'. Could it go with sator, our subject? It could, but then we're left with tenet hanging
around doing nothing, because there's nothing for it to do: it's a verb and nothing else. So this isn't our
verb.

[rotas, when it's a verb, is similar to opera, only it's indicative instead of imperative, describing instead
of commanding: 'you rotate'. But again, if this is our verb, what are we going to do with poor old tenet?
This can't be it either.

Having eliminated the other possibilities, we are left with only one choice: tenet is our verb. So we have:

Arepo the sower holds

What's he holding? Let's find a noun that's in the accusative or dative case (direct object and indirect
object, respectively). We have two words that might be accusative nouns: opera, 'works', and rotas,
'wheels'. So, he's either holding the works:

Arepo the sower holds the works

or the wheels:

Arepo the sower holds the wheels

Run with the first one. If he's holding the wheels, what are the other two words doing? arepo is a proper
name, so it's not doing anything. If rotas isn't a noun, it must be a verb—and we already have our verb,
and this is a simple sentence, so we're not getting into multiple clauses here. It looks like opera is not
the object of this sentence, which leaves only rotas:

Arepo the sower holds the wheels

Now we're getting somewhere. We just have to fit opera into the sentence somewhere. We've already
tried and rejected opera as a verb and an accusative noun, so let's try its remaining meaning. It might be
in the nominative, but that role is already fulfilled by sator, so it's not. The only meaning left is
the ablative form of opus, which means 'work', 'care', 'effort', and a number of other things. In English
we translate the Latin ablative using 'from', 'with', or 'by', so:

Arepo the sower holds the wheels {from/with/by} {work/care/effort}

and from there we just need to find something that reads well in English; I like:

Arepo the sower holds the wheels with care

In summation, if you're going to do original research here, please try to have some idea of what you're
talking about.

As for this bit:

The most plausible explanation for the sator square's existence is that the Latin language was likely
originally built around it rather than vice versa.

show me one source that says this, and I'll show you a source that says I'm the Grand High Emperor of
Venus. There's no need to postulate that this phrase holds the secret of some esoteric origin for Latin
when we have a simple and reasonable explanation right here: that it's a clever piece of Latin wordplay,
no more. —Charles P. (Mirv) 11:13, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

p.s. the postulated translation

I the creator god, stealthily advancing toward, am he who holds the work which you spin.

simply doesn't work: while it's theoretically possible to form a noun from the stem of tenere, it would be
formed with the ending -tor (cf. orator, operator, interlocutor), so he who holds would be something
like tenetor, and that doesn't fit. —Charles P. (Mirv) 11:25, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A problem here is that "opera" cannot be the ablative of "opus". The ablative of "opus" is "opere" in the
singular, and "operibus" in the plural. - furrykef (Talk at me) 02:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)