1653: mare and march Jun 24, 2019
The word 'mare' dates back to Old English as a feminine word for 'horse'. Today, it means denotes a female horse but Old English had 3 grammatical genders, and 'mere' (mare) was merely the feminine equivalent for 'mearh' (horse). That word has since been usurped by 'horse', which also existed in Old English. Therefore, the Welsh word 'march' meaning 'stallion'—with no female equivalent—is one of its closest cognates, certainly outside of Germanic languages. See more on 'mare' in 'nightmare'.
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981: New Strong Verbs Aug 16, 2017
Anyone who reads Word Facts often will have heard plenty by now about strong verbs. There are relatively few of these, and they tend to follow the pattern of '-i-, -a-, -u-', but historically there was a great deal more variation, as one can still see with words like 'dive, dove', and 'tear, tore'. Moreover, nearly all of these are Germanic, coming from Old English for the most part, but there are a few words which were historically weak verbs and then became strong verbs. Among them are 'dig, dug' and 'fling, flung'; they happen to be Germanic in origin coincidentally, and the modern strong past tense form is somewhat invented. With those words, as well as others like 'wear, wore', even though they developed different forms than they had originally, they still followed the same patterns of words that they resemble in sound to some extent. Nevertheless, while it is true that English has gained some new strong verbs, more often they are lost; the word 'climb' used to become 'clumb' in the past tense rather than 'climbed' as it is for most people now, but that original form is still used in some parts of Appalachia.
803: Verbal Suffixes in Widen and Strengthen (-en day 4) Feb 18, 2017
The derivatives of the word 'wide', by chance, take on forms that are systematic but quite rare in in English, such as the nominal '-th' suffix in 'width', which you can see more of in the link below. Not only that, but it also takes an '-(e)n' suffix, as in 'widen' which turns this term into a verb. More specifically, the '-en' suffix is used to transform adjectives into verbs that demonstrate development or amplification. This ending is also employed in order to make a verb from a noun, such as 'strengthen' that derives from 'strength' and not the adjectival form 'strong', though also not the etymologically related noun, 'string' which referred to loading a bow with an arrow. Unlike the other '-en' suffixes, this comes from the Old English '-nian' that developed over time; in fact, the verb 'to man' in Old English was 'mannian' from 'mann', but it no longer uses a verbal suffix.
376: -ty Dec 19, 2015
Everyone learns the number system in preschool and kindergarten, and in comparison to certain other languages (like French) the number system is relatively easy. After the first nine numbers, the larger units (hundreds, thousands) are counted by simply putting a number in front. Decades, and teens are both irregular and due to Old English forms of ten. Fourteen, for example is four+tīen, and the 'ty', or in Old English, 'tig', is another form used for groups of tens.