The copula or copulae (the verb or verbs meaning "to be") in all Romance languages erive mostly from the Latin verbs SVM and STO. The former was the copular verb "to be" (ultimately from the Indo-European copula *h1es-), and the latter mainly meant "to stand" (ultimately from the Indo-European *steh2-), but was sometimes translatable as "to be". When Latin developed into the Romance languages, the use of STO expanded, encroaching on the field of SVM. This article deals with the exact distinction between the two verbs in the languages in which they exist.