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[personal profile] muckefuck
Here's a question for you English etymology mavens: How many verbs can you name which were not strong in Old English but are in the modern language?

I'll take dive off the list since (a) dove is considered by many to be an Americanism and (b) it's the only one I knew about before I started researching the question. That still leaves three more indisputable cases I've unearthed plus one that's more arguable. Do you know what they are?
Date: 2006-06-10 03:17 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
OED sez:
The change from the weak to the strong conjugation, due to the analogy of verbs like swear, bear, tear, seems to have begun in the 14th c., but is rare before the 16th.
Give yourself a cookie! This isn't even one of the ones I thinking of!
Date: 2006-06-10 03:32 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] tanagers.livejournal.com
Mmmm... hazelnut! Delicious.

How about dig/dug?
Date: 2006-06-10 03:39 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
It is properly a weak verb, pa. tense and pple. digged, but in 16th c. received a strong pa. pple. dug, analogous to stuck, which since 18th c. has also been used as pa. tense.
Damn you're good at this!
Date: 2006-06-10 04:01 pm (UTC)

hmmm...

From: [identity profile] tanagers.livejournal.com
I remember discussing this once back at Georgetown, but I have forgotten most of it.

Two questions-- what about wake/woke? That one always bothers me. The end of To Kill a Mockingbird sounds so wrong, and yet, in a way, it's also right.

The other one is drink/drank. I know that it should be drink/drunk, but because drunk tends to be an adjective, drank seems to have taken over as the pp. That one might be interesting, because while it was already strong, it changed forms to another irregular, you know?

The obvious one is spit/spat, though.

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