2856: Beheld and Beholden Oct 15, 2024

Behold has two possible participial forms: beheld and beholden. While the former is used as a past tense, but as with other words in English (see: hanged-hung) there is a semantic difference between the two, with ‘beheld’ denoting looking or regarding, like ‘behold’ does, but ‘beholden’ meaning ‘obliged’ is not acting the same way. You might think this was a shift over time of the whole word, but really ‘beholden’ is acting more in line with the root ‘hold’. The prefix be- which was more productive in Old English, which changed the meaning to something extended temporally (beholden = held continuously) but also metaphorically (behold/beheld = held in view). In older forms of English as a result, ‘beheld’ and ‘beholden’ etc. could be used interchangeably, but when the prefix be- became less productive, the meanings narrowed and diverged.