Managing Editor
Sometime in the 1970s, I recall watching a television show on PBS about English language words and how you could tell a verb’s age by the way it is conjugated.
The university professor who was giving this presentation said that words such as keep, sweep, leap and send are derivatives of older Celtic words which remain to this day in modern English. The past tense of keep is kept, for sweep it is swept, feel becomes felt and send is sent.
By this logic, the professor concluded that other old English verbs include sleep and creep, with the past tense of sleep being slept and creep becoming crept. Weep’s past tense is wept, lend becomes lent, spend’s past tense is spent, while the past tense of lose is lost and for leave, it’s left.
He went on to say that bend is an older English word because it’s past tense is bent, while the past tense of mean is meant, deal is dealt, and build is built.
Other older English verbs by his definition then would include buy (bought), catch (caught), bring (brought), seek (sought), teach (taught) and think (thought).
Because some newer verbs were introduced later to the English language and were first conjugated with a “t” but can also be conjugated in the past tense with an “ed,” the professor suggested these words were newer in origin.
These verbs include burn, dream, kneel, leap, learn, smell, spell, spill and spoil. Using very old English, some authors may say burnt, but nowadays the preferred term in modern English is burned. Same thing holds true for dreamt (dreamed), knelt (kneeled), learnt (learned), smelt (smelled), spelt (spelled), spilt (spilled), and spoilt (spoiled).
Through time, several other older English verbs conjugated in past tense can have two different words meaning the same thing, such as pass, pen, and bereave. The past tense of pass can either be past or passed, while pen’s past tense can be pent or penned, and bereave’s past tense can be bereft or bereaved.
In his presentation, the professor said some of the older Celtic verbs are thought to have been spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, originating from northwest Germany, southern Denmark, and the Netherlands. They brought their Germanic-based dialects to England and these dialects combined with Celtic languages already being used set the cornerstone for the old English language. That became modified with infusions of older Norse as Viking invaders raided parts of early Britain and were further shaped by the Norman conquest of England in 1066 which introduced some French influences into the English dialect.
Old English words thought to have come from Vikings are knife, freckle, berserk, window, sky, husband, aloft, awkward, bag, blunder, and droop.
Some examples of newer English words with French influences, the professor said, contain “ch” and “que” and “ou” such as machine, unique, antique and boutique or youth and soup. Other newer verbs of French influence in English that came after the Norman invasion can be conjugated in the past tense with “ed” instead of “t” and include waste (wasted), and taste (tasted).
The Renaissance during the 16th century was yet another period when new words were added to the English language, the professor said. Some came from Latin origins and were introduced by scholars of that time such as atrocity, debilitate, ferrous, naïve and stipend while others derived from Greek origins including duo, pneumonia, and gravity.
Back in 2009, a study conducted by Reading University in England found that the oldest words in the English language include “I”, “we”, “who”, “two” and “three,” all dating back to at least in common use prior to the Norman invasion. The discovery was made by tracking the divergence of ancestral words into different languages including old English using a supercomputer and before the introduction of AI technology.
Many older English words commonly used centuries ago never quite made it into the modern English language and the list is lengthy.
Here’s a sampling of few old English words no longer used today and their meanings:
“Afeared” or “Afeardt,” meaning frightened.
“Bodkin,” meaning a dagger.
“Contumely” meaning insulting behavior.
“Cumberground” meaning a totally useless person or a total waste of space.
“Demesne” meaning domain, realm or territory.
“Doxy” meaning a mistress.
“Elflock” meaning wavy or tangled hair.
“Frore” meaning extremely cold.
“Jargogle” meaning jumbled.
“Lollop” meaning a drunken or foolish person.
“Maegth” meaning family.
“Recreant” meaning cowardly.
“Sluberdegullion” meaning slovenly.
“Varlet” meaning a crook or a conman.
“Wamblecropt” meaning someone who is overcome with indigestion.
“Wundorlic” meaning a feeling of wonder mixed with fear or the awe experienced when seeing something both marvelous and unsettling.
Taking a deeper dive into the English language can be both fascinating or frustrating and yet with everything else going on in our lives these days, examining the origins of certain words and conjugations may not appear near the top of many people’s lists of things to do.
But it can be interesting to learn the age of some commonly used words today. <
