Re: Usage (was Re: OT: Re: New Address Book in Jaguar 10.2...)
Re: Usage (was Re: OT: Re: New Address Book in Jaguar 10.2...)
- Subject: Re: Usage (was Re: OT: Re: New Address Book in Jaguar 10.2...)
- From: richard_howland-bolton <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 15:44:59 -0500
>
On Wednesday, August 28, 2002, at 10:56 AM, Chris Espinosa wrote:
>
> No, 'vax' pl. 'vaxen' / 'osax' pl. 'osaxen' are homologous with 'ox'
>
> pl. 'oxen', which is the only English '-xen' plural.
>
You mean that the woodsmen didn't chop down the trees with their axen?
>
--Michelle <ducking and running>
It's all Michelle's fault, :-) but I just noticed that Chris made a
slight slip when otherwise correctly correcting me. The plural isn't
in '-xen' but '-en'.
This from the OED:
"the form assumed in ME. by the OE. -an, the termination of the nom.,
accus., and dat. plural of ns. of the weak declension, as in oxa masc.,
ox, pl. oxan; tunge fem., tongue, pl. tungan; iare neut., ear, pl. iaran.
In origin the suffix belonged to the stem; but as in OE. the nom. sing.
of these ns. ended in -a, -e (levelled in ME. to -e), while the OE. -an
of the oblique cases sing. became -e in ME., the termination -en came
to be regarded as a formative of the plural, and its use was extended
in southern ME. to many other words of OE. and Fr. origin. It was also
added to the remains of other old plurals, as brether, childer (OE.
cildru), ky (OE. cy'), whence the modern brethren, children, kine.
Apart from these the sole surviving representative (in standard Eng.)
of this inflexion is ox-en; but hos-en (OE. hosan) continued in use
until 17th c. In southern and south midland dialects the plurals in
-en are still of frequent occurrence."
Sorry to continue to make this a HEL of a list.
rhb
(OE = Old English, roughly 700AD-1150
ME = Middle English, 1150-1450
HEL (as a term of art) = History of the English Language)
Richard Howland-Bolton email@hidden
email@hidden
email@hidden
email@hidden
jcpenney phone 972 431 3979
cell phone 214 662 0536
home phone 972 312 0536
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