1. WendThere are a bunch more, most of which I hadn't known.
You rarely see a “wend” without a “way.” You can wend your way through a crowd or down a hill, but no one wends to bed or to school. However, there was a time when English speakers would wend to all kinds of places. “Wend” was just another word for “go” in Old English. The past tense of “wend” was “went” and the past tense of “go” was “gaed.” People used both until the 15th century, when “go” became the preferred verb, except in the past tense where “went” hung on, leaving us with an outrageously irregular verb.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
I did not know that
Isegoria (you do read him every day, don't you?) finds a delightful post about "fossilized" words in the English language, and where they came from:
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4 comments:
Via Google Definition:
Wend: Verb
Go in a specified direction, typically slowly or by an indirect route.
I've always associated "wend" with "weave", typically in a "wend one's way through a crowd" sort of connotation. But I agree, lots of perfectly good old words out there that need to be revived!
Thanks for the kind words, Borepatch. (And nice ekename, by the way.)
Those old Anglo-Saxon words remind me of Poul Anderson's Uncleftish Beholding piece, where he translates all the Greek and Latin roots in modern scientific jargon into their Germanic equivalents.
"There are a bunch more, most of which I hadn't known"
Does anyone?
The more I learn about the english language the more I'm shocked that anyone manages to use it. :P
When I first composed this poem in Microsoft Word, I was surprised to find that the native spellchecker did not recognize the word "wend." I had seen the word several times before in poetry, and had discerned that it meant "to go" or some close variation thereof. I guess no one uses it much these days, since it doesn't useful outside of poetry. Still, I'm surprised that it has fallen that far out of use.
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