Vulnerable verbs
AS we talk, we pick up and use current words, then new ones replace them. We barely notice the change. But when we write or read, we have more space in which to think. Then we may notice an expression going out of currency. I’ve selected some vulnerable verbs.
Forego and forgo
I like forego and forgo, of good old Saxon origin. For the wordsbuff they preserve two distinct prefixes: fore (= before or front, as in forelock and forehead); and
for, which (though it also once meant ‘‘before’’) soon meant away or off, as in forsake and forget.
Their past tenses will have been
forewent and forwent. But I’ve never heard these verbs in the past tense. The nearest is the past participle foregone, as in foregone
conclusion (where the end is predictable — almost forecast,
foreknown, foretold), kept going by being embedded in a stock phrase. Forgone, by contrast, seems antiquated or precious: would a forgone option be one you had chosen to avoid? So the verbs are quite rare, and their past tense is obsolescent.
Strong verbs
In common verbs, such gaps are, well, common. Plainly, the verb go lost its natural past tense, which matched German ging from gehen in favour of a synonym, went, which comes from another verb, to wend; which in turn lost the forms which we take from go instead. I go, but I went.
Similarly with the verb to be.
What a potpourri: am, are, is, be,
was, were. The lost forms were once obsolescent, then obsolete, or buried in dialect (Oi be a varmer from zummerzet).
Thrive, strive
Similarly with thrive or strive.
They survive, though less in speech than writing. But how about their past tenses: do you ever say throve, or strove? If you needed their past tenses, you might find yourself understood better if you said strived or
thrived.
Thus another socalled ‘‘strong’’ verb, one which modifies its vowel for the past tense (like give
gave, taketook), would have lost its original form through nonuse. Strong verbs, if not used, are weaker than ‘‘weak’’ verbs. They get sucked into the — ed past form. Somewhere, somehow, English lost holp to helped, and
molt to melted (although participial molten lingers on, like
swollen).
Eschew, stymie, defray
More examples: eschew, defray,
stymie. To eschew means to avoid or shun: who uses it, who needs it, isn’t it pompous? And might we do without defray (from Old French deffroier, = simply to pay)? It survives only in phrases, ‘‘defraying expenses’’, costs and the like. But I would miss stymie.
It just means hinder, prevent, or block; but that sense originated with golf, describing ‘‘an opponent’s ball which blocks your shot at the hole’’. Of Scottish origin (naturally), it links with an older word meaning ‘‘not seeing well’’. Your ball can’t see the hole, the whole hole. But the law for long had said, ‘‘No Lifting’’ of the stymying ball. The infamous rule was changed in 1952. Golf is difficult enough already! But the word remains as metaphor — just.
So what?
But should a wordlover shed a tear when a verb vanishes? Should every word be kept alive, in the way conservationists mourn the loss of a species? Or do dictionaries do enough, by preserving the memory and past use? What do readers think?