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-t

suffix

Etymology

From Middle English -te (past tense ending), -t (past participle ending), from Old English -te, -de (first and third person past tense ending), -t, -ed, -od (past participle ending), from Proto-Germanic *-id- (past tense stem ending of class 1 weak verbs) and *-idaz (past participle ending of class 1 weak verbs). In some verbs, like lose/lost, the ‐t‐/‐t arose during the Middle English period from the devoicing of the earlier ‐d‐/‐d. This devoicing typically occurred after the suffix was syncopated from ‐ede and ‐ed, forcing the voiced alveolar stop directly against the stem’s final consonant. See -ed.

  1. inherited from *-atjaną✻
  2. inherited from *-attjan✻
  3. inherited from -ettan
  4. inherited from -ten

Definitions

  1. Used to form the past tense and/or past participle of some verbs.

    • leap + -t → leapt
    • keep + -t → kept
    • dream + -t → dreamt

  2. An excrescent ending appended to words suffixed with -s.

    • against, amidst, amongst, betwixt, whilst, twicet

  3. Used to form nouns from verbs of action

    Used to form nouns from verbs of action; equivalent to -th.

    • arise + -t → arist
    • bow + -t → bout
    • drive + -t → drift
  4. ›+ 2 more definitions

    1. Used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives (compare -ate, -ize), frequently having a…

      Used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives (compare -ate, -ize), frequently having a causative force, or modified from an existing verb into a frequentative verb.

      • yeet (adress with ye), grunt, fidget, haunt (via French), elt (via Old Norse), belt (“to sing loudly”) (perhaps via West Frisian), jolt

    2. Added to the end of words ending in ⟨d⟩, representing an AAVE pronunciation as /t/ rather…

      Added to the end of words ending in ⟨d⟩, representing an AAVE pronunciation as /t/ rather than /d/, now generally with intensifying force.

      • period + -t → periodt
      • good + -t → goodt
      • Lord + -t → Lordt

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for -t. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA