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49-500: Caveat emptor ( / ˈ ɛ m p t ɔːr / ; from caveat , "may he/she beware", a subjunctive form of cavēre , "to beware" + ēmptor , "buyer") is Latin for "Let the buyer beware". It has become a proverb in English. Generally, caveat emptor is the contract law principle that controls the sale of real property after the date of closing , but may also apply to sales of other goods. The phrase caveat emptor and its use as

98-426: A guarantee of satisfaction . Under the principle of caveat emptor , the buyer could not recover damages from the seller for defects on the property that rendered the property unfit for ordinary purposes. The only exception was if the seller actively concealed latent defects or otherwise made material misrepresentations amounting to fraud . Before statutory law , the buyer had no express warranty ensuring

147-589: A high vowel even when the indicative mood has a lower vowel; for example, Latin rogamus , "we ask", in the indicative mood, corresponds to the subjunctive rogemus , "let us ask", where e is a higher vowel than a . The subjunctive mood retains a highly distinct form for nearly all verbs in Portuguese , Spanish and Italian (among other Romance languages ), and for a number of verbs in French . All of these languages inherit their subjunctive from Latin, where

196-409: A disclaimer of warranties arises from the fact that buyers typically have less information than the seller about the good or service they are purchasing. This quality of the situation is known as ' information asymmetry '. Defects in the good or service may be hidden from the buyer, and only known to the seller. It is a short form of Caveat emptor, quia ignorare non debuit quod jus alienum emit ("Let

245-426: A fait partir, et moi je comptois qu'elle vous feroit rester jusqu'à ce que vous eussiez reçu des nouvelles du départ de mon manuscrit ; au moins étoit-ce le sens littéral et spirituel de ma lettre. The Italian subjunctive ( congiuntivo ) is commonly used, although, especially in the spoken language, it is sometimes substituted by the indicative. The subjunctive is used mainly in subordinate clauses following

294-581: A form of picture identification and place per-transaction and/or per-person quantity or dollar limitations on such returns. In the UK, consumer law has moved away from the caveat emptor model, with laws passed that have enhanced consumer rights and allow greater leeway to return goods that do not meet legal standards of acceptance. Consumer purchases are regulated by the Consumer Rights Act 2015 , whilst business-to-business purchases are regulated by

343-465: A literal interpretation, along the lines of "the thing which is", is translated as English "whatever" or "anything"; similarly, Spanish donde sea is English "wherever" and Spanish quien sea is English "whoever". For example, Spanish lo que quieras , literally "that which you want", is translated as English "whatever you may want"; Spanish cueste lo que cueste is translated to English as "whatever it may cost"; and Spanish donde vayas, voy

392-416: A past subjunctive conjugation, but in spoken German the conditional is most commonly formed using würde (Konjunktiv II form of werden which in here is related to the English will or would rather than the literal to become ; dialect: täte , KII of tun 'to do') with an infinitive. For example: An deiner Stelle würde ich ihm nicht helfen 'I would not help him if I were you'. In

441-407: A purchaser beware, for he ought not to be ignorant of the nature of the property which he is buying from another party.") I.e. the buyer should assure himself that the product is good and that the seller had the right to sell it, as opposed to receiving stolen property. A common way that information asymmetry between seller and buyer has been addressed is through a legally binding warranty , such as

490-583: A refund but will provide store credit . In the cases of software , movies , and other copyrighted material, many vendors will offer only a direct exchange for another copy of the same title, with the effect that the initial transfer or license of intellectual-property rights is preserved. Most stores require proof of purchase and impose time limits on exchanges or refunds. Some larger chain stores , such as F.Y.E. , Staples , Target , or Walmart , will, however, do exchanges or refunds at any time, with or without proof of purchase, although they usually require

539-461: A sentence: Within independent clauses : Within dependent clauses : Historically, the Latin subjunctive originates from the ancestral optative inflections , while some of the original subjunctive forms went on to compose the Latin future tense , especially in the Latin third conjugation. The * -i- of the old optative forms manifests itself in the fact that the Latin subjunctives typically have

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588-564: A set phrase or conjunction, such as benché , senza che , prima che , or perché . It is also used with verbs of doubt, possibility and expressing an opinion or desire, for example with credo che , è possibile che and ritengo che , and sometimes with superlatives and virtual superlatives. Differently from the French subjunctive, the Italian one is used after expressions like Penso che ("I think that"), where in French

637-402: A somewhat other meaning, indirect speech has to switch to the perfect tense, so that: Er sagte: "Ich war da." becomes Er sagte, er sei da gewesen. The KII or past subjunctive is used to form the conditional tense and, on occasion, as a replacement for the present subjunctive when both indicative and subjunctive moods of a particular verb are indistinguishable. Every German verb has

686-463: A statutory "cooling off" period of fourteen calendar days during which the purchase contract can be cancelled and treated as if not done. Although no longer applied in consumer law, the principle of caveat emptor is generally held to apply to transactions between businesses unless it can be shown that the seller had a clear information advantage over the buyer that could not have been removed by carrying out reasonable due diligence . Caveat venditor

735-449: A subjunctive mood ( aanvoegende wijs ) and sometimes conditional mood ( voorwaardelijke wijs ). In practice, potential subjunctive uses of verbs are difficult to differentiate from indicative uses. This is partly because the subjunctive mood has fallen together with the indicative mood: Archaic and traditional phrases still contain the subjunctive mood: Luxembourgish has the same subjunctive tenses as German (described above). For

784-430: A wish or hope), with the present subjunctive marked with * -ai- and the past with * -ī- . In German , these forms have been reduced to a schwa , spelled -e . The past tense, however, often displays i- umlaut . In Old Norse , both suffixes evolved into -i- , but i-umlaut occurs in the past subjunctive, which distinguishes them. In Modern English , the subjunctive is realised as a finite but tenseless clause where

833-456: Is Latin for "let the seller beware." In the landmark case of MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co. (1916), New York Court Appeals Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo established that privity of duty is no longer required in regard to a lawsuit for product liability against the seller. This case is widely regarded as the origin of caveat venditor as it pertains to modern tort law in US. Caveat lector

882-574: Is a Latin phrase meaning "let the reader beware". It means that when reading something, the reader should take careful note of the contents, and undertake due diligence on whether the contents are accurate, relevant, reliable and so forth. Another variant is Caveat Auditor , or "let the listener beware", where caution is urged regarding all messages, in particular spoken messages, such as a radio advertisement. Subjunctive mood Subjunctives occur most often, although not exclusively, in subordinate clauses , particularly that -clauses . Examples of

931-411: Is often changed in written reports to the forms using present subjunctive. The present subjunctive is completely regular for all verbs except the verb sein ("to be"). It is formed by adding -e, -est, -e, -en, -et, -en to the stem of the infinitive. The verb sein has the stem sei- for the present subjunctive declension, but it has no ending for the first and third person singular. While

980-399: Is the maximum price at or below which a consumer will definitely buy one unit of a product . This corresponds to the standard economic view of a consumer reservation price . Some researchers, however, conceptualize WTP as a range. According to the constructed preference view, consumer willingness to pay is a context-sensitive construct; that is, a consumer's WTP for a product depends on

1029-494: Is the only other subjunctive tense used in modern-day conversational French. It is formed with the auxiliary être or avoir and the past participle of the verb. Unlike other Romance languages, such as Spanish, it is not always necessary that the preceding clause be in the past to trigger the passé du subjonctif in the subordinate clause: Imperfect and pluperfect subjunctives French also has an imperfect subjunctive, which in older, formal, or literary writing, replaces

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1078-448: Is translated to English as "wherever you go, I go". The acronym W.E.I.R.D.O, is commonly used by English-speaking students of Spanish to learn the subjunctive. It usually stands for Wish Emotion Impersonal Expressions Reccomendations Doubt Ojalá. With the exception of negative commands, the subjunctive is always activated in the second clause, when a situation of "W.E.I.R.D.O" is present. Present and past subjunctives The subjunctive

1127-461: Is used in a range of situations in clauses taking the subjunctive. The present subjunctive is used mostly in subordinate clauses, as in the examples above. However, exceptions include imperatives using the subjunctive (using the third person), and general statements of desire. The Italian imperfect subjunctive is very similar in appearance to (but used much more in speech than) the French imperfect subjunctive, and forms are largely regular, apart from

1176-405: Is used mostly with verbs or adverbs expressing desire, doubt or eventuality; it may also express an order. It is almost always preceded by the conjunction que ( that ). Use of the subjunctive is in many respects similar to English: Sometimes it is not: French uses a past subjunctive, equivalent in tense to the passé composé in the indicative mood, called " passé du subjonctif ". It

1225-508: The Sale of Goods Act 1979 . In the UK, consumers have the right to a full refund for faulty goods. However, traditionally, many retailers allow customers to return goods within a specified period (typically two weeks to two months) for a full refund or an exchange, even if there is no fault with the product. Exceptions may apply for goods sold as damaged or to clear. Goods bought through "distance selling," for example online or by phone, also have

1274-616: The clitic set of secondary personal inflections. The optative was used to express wishes or hopes. Among the Indo-European languages, only Albanian , Avestan , Ancient Greek , and Sanskrit kept the subjunctive and the optative fully separate and parallel. However, in Sanskrit, use of the subjunctive is found only in the Vedic language of the earliest times, and the optative and imperative are comparatively less commonly used. In

1323-542: The preterite (imperfect) declension of the verb with the appropriate present subjunctive declension ending as appropriate. In most cases, an umlaut is appended to the stem vowel if possible (i.e. if it is a , o , u or au ), for example: ich war → ich wäre, ich brachte → ich brächte . Dutch has the same subjunctive tenses as German (described above), though they are rare in contemporary speech. The same two tenses as in German are sometimes considered

1372-475: The subjunctive in English are found in the sentences "I suggest that you be careful" and "It is important that she stay by your side." The Proto-Indo-European language , the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages , had two closely related moods: the subjunctive and the optative . Many of its daughter languages combined or merged these moods. In Indo-European, the subjunctive

1421-401: The buyer may promptly return or refuse to accept ("reject") them and demand that the defect be remedied ("cured"). When goods fitting the same description and expectations are available for sale ( e.g. , when the vendor has other instances of the same mass-produced merchandise in stock inventory), either the vendor or the buyer may insist on an "even exchange" for other, "conforming" instances of

1470-424: The buyer may recover only the damages that s/he would have suffered had s/he taken all feasible steps to minimize ("mitigate") his/her damages suffered. As a default rule, the perfect-tender rule may be "contracted around" in ways that specify or limit a buyer's remedies (and that accordingly reduce the market price that rational buyers are willing to pay for the goods). In many cases, the vendor will not provide

1519-566: The example, the Konjunktiv II form of helfen (hülfe) is very unusual. However, using 'würde' instead of hätte (past subjunctive declension of haben 'to have') and wäre (past subjunctive declension of sein 'to be') can be perceived anywhere from awkward (in-the-present use of the past subjunctive) to incorrect (in the past subjunctive). There is a tendency to use the forms in würde rather in main clauses as in English; in subclauses even regular forms (which sound like

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1568-427: The formal, written Er sagte, er habe keine Zeit 'He said he had no time' with present subjunctive habe , one can use past subjunctive hätte : Er sagte, er hätte keine Zeit. In speech, however, the past subjunctive is common without any implication that the speaker doubts the speech he is reporting. As common is use of the indicative Er sagte, er ist Arzt and Er sagte, er hat keine Zeit. This

1617-462: The goods as sold "as is" and/or "with all faults") or other limitations such as the below-discussed limitations on remedies. The perfect-tender rule states that if a buyer who inspects new goods with reasonable promptness discovers them to be "nonconforming" (failing to meet the description provided or any other standards reasonably expectable by a buyer in his/her situation) and does not use the goods or take other actions constituting acceptance of them,

1666-407: The indicative of the preterite and are, thus, obsolete in any other circumstances) can still be heard. Some verbs exist for which either construction can be used, such as with finden ( fände ) and tun ( täte ). Many dictionaries consider the past subjunctive declension of such verbs the only proper expression in formal written German. The past subjunctive is declined from the stem of

1715-422: The indicative would be used. However, it is also possible to use the subjunctive after the expression Je ne pense pas que... ("I don't think that..."), and in questions like Penses-tu que... ("Do you think that..."), even though the indicative forms can be correct, too. The present subjunctive is similar to, but still mostly distinguishable from, the present indicative. Subject pronouns are often used with

1764-442: The king!") and in indirect (reported) speech. Its use can frequently be replaced by the indicative mood. For example, Er sagte, er sei Arzt ('He said he was a physician') is a neutral representation of what was said and makes no claim as to whether the speaker thinks the reported statement is true or not. The past subjunctive can often be used to express the same sentiments: Er sagte, er wäre Arzt. Or, for example, instead of

1813-499: The later language (from c. 500 BC), the subjunctive fell out of use, with the optative or imperative being used instead, or merged with the optative as in Latin. However, the first-person forms of the subjunctive continue to be used, as they are transferred to the imperative, which formerly, like Greek, had no first person forms. In the Germanic languages , subjunctives are also usually formed from old optatives (a mood that indicates

1862-562: The main verb occurs in the bare form. Since the bare form is also used in a variety of other constructions, the English subjunctive is reflected by a clause type rather than a distinct inflectional paradigm. German has German has two forms of the subjunctive mood , namely Konjunktiv I (KI) 'present subjunctive' and Konjunktiv II (KII) 'past subjunctive'. Despite their English names, both German subjunctives can be used for past and present time. The present subjunctive occurs in certain expressions, (e.g. Es lebe der König! "Long live

1911-404: The periphrasis however, géif is used instead of würde or (dialectal) täte . The subjunctive mood is very rarely used in modern Swedish and is limited to a few fixed expressions like leve kungen , "long live the king". Present subjunctive is formed by adding the -e ending to the stem of a verb: The Latin subjunctive has many uses, contingent upon the nature of a clause within

1960-868: The present subjunctive in a subordinate clause when the main clause is in a past tense (including in the French conditional , which is morphologically a future-in-the-past): Pour une brave dame, / Monsieur, qui vous honore, et de toute son âme Voudrait que vous vinssiez, à ma sommation, / Lui faire un petit mot de réparation. [...] je voudrais que vous vinssiez une fois à Berlin pour y rester, et que vous eussiez la force de soustraire votre légère nacelle aux bourrasques et aux vents qui l'ont battue si souvent en France. J'aimerais qu'ils fissent leur début comme sous-maîtres dans les écoles importantes. Je craignais que vous ne voulussiez pas me recevoir. Similarly, pluperfect subjunctive replace past subjunctive in same context: Ma lettre, à laquelle vous venez de répondre, à fait un effet bien différent que je n'attendois : elle vous

2009-422: The present subjunctive where they are normally omitted in the indicative, since in the first, second and third person singular forms they are the same, so the person is not implicitly implied from the verb. Irregular verbs tend to follow the first person singular form, such as the present subjunctive forms of andare , which goes to vada etc. (first person singular form is vado ). The present subjunctive

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2058-507: The product. When conforming goods are not available in stock but are available for the dealer to purchase (usually on the open or "spot" market), the buyer may require that the seller obtain the goods elsewhere, even at a higher price, with the seller having to incur a loss equivalent to the price difference. If the vendor still does not or cannot provide the goods and the dispute proceeds to litigation (as opposed to renegotiation or settlement), then as in all cases of vendor breaches of contract,

2107-428: The quality of goods. In the UK, common law requires that goods must be "fit for the particular purpose" and of "merchantable quality", per Section 15 of the Sale of Goods Act but this implied warranty can be difficult to enforce and may not apply to all products. Hence, buyers are still advised to be cautious. The modern trend in the U.S. is that the implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose applies in

2156-559: The real-estate context to only the sale of new residential housing by a builder-seller and that the caveat emptor rule applies to all other real-estate sale situations (e.g. homeowner to buyer). Other jurisdictions have provisions similar to this. Under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code , the sale of new goods is governed by the "perfect-tender" rule unless the parties to the sale expressly agree in advance to terms equivalent to caveat emptor (such as describing

2205-834: The subjunctive for these; French, for example, says, Qu'il neige and Qu'ils vivent jusqu'à leur vieillesse . However, in the case of the first-person plural, these languages have imperative forms: "Let us go" in French is Allons-y . In addition, the Romance languages tend to use the subjunctive in various kinds of subordinate clauses, such as those introduced by words meaning although English: "Although I am old, I feel young"; French: Bien que je sois vieux, je me sens jeune. In Spanish, phrases with words like lo que (that which, what), quien (who), or donde (where) and subjunctive verb forms are often translated to English with some variation of "whatever" or sometimes an indefinite pronoun. Spanish lo que sea , which is, by

2254-459: The subjunctive mood combines both forms and usages from a number of original Indo-European inflection sets, including the original subjunctive and the optative mood . In many cases, the Romance languages use the subjunctive in the same ways that English does; however, they use them in other ways as well. For example, English generally uses the auxiliary 'may' or 'let' to form desiderative expressions, such as "Let it snow". The Romance languages use

2303-404: The use of present subjunctive for reported speech is formal and common in newspaper articles, its use in colloquial speech is in continual decline. It is possible to express the subjunctive in various tenses, including the perfect ( er sei da gewesen 'he has [apparently] been there') and the future ( er werde da sein 'he will be there'). For the preterite, which forms the Konjunktiv II with

2352-487: The verbs essere, dare and stare (which go to fossi, dessi and stessi etc.). However, unlike in French, where it is often replaced with the present subjunctive, the imperfect subjunctive is far more common. Verbs with a contracted infinitive, such as dire (short for dicere ) revert to the longer form in the imperfect subjunctive (to give dicessi etc., for example). Willingness to pay In behavioral economics , willingness to pay ( WTP )

2401-404: Was formed by using the full ablaut grade of the root of the verb and appending the thematic vowel * -e- or * -o- to the root stem, with the full, primary set of personal inflections. The subjunctive was the Indo-European irrealis , used for hypothetical or counterfactual situations. The optative mood was formed with a suffix * -ieh 1 or * -ih 1 (with a laryngeal ). The optative used

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