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verbs - Send, sent; end, *ent?


The past tense of a number of verbs changes from -end to -ent:



  • bend → bent

  • lend → lent

  • rend → rent

  • send → sent

  • spend → spent

  • wend → went


However, most do not, notably end. Granted, I say “I ent up” (facetiously?), but how did this sound change come to happen to some verbs but not others? Of the examples above, all but spend come to us from non-Latin origins; but end and blend and trend and many others are all non-Latin as well, and don’t exhibit this change.


I gather that this happened some time in the transition from Old English, because (if I’m up on my Old English conjugation, which is questionable) these verbs all used to have regular past forms:



  • bend: bendan → (ge)bended

  • lend: lænan → (ge)læned(?)

  • rend: rendon → (ge)rended

  • send: sendan → (ge)sended

  • -spend: forspendan → (ge)forspended(?)

  • wend: wendan → (ge)wended


Can anyone offer some insight? Is this related to learned/learnt, dreamed/dreamt, &c.?



Answer



The absence of any immediate answer to this interesting question confirms my belief that it is not a subject which lends itself well to a Q&A site such as this. The history of English verb forms is a complex subject and each of the verbs you mention would merit a reply in itself. To give an idea of what might be involved, the OED records the past tense of send as appearing in the following forms between its first appearance in Old English and the 15th century: sende, seonde, sænde, sænte, sennde, sente, seende, send, sont, sent, sendet, sendyd, seended and sended. In addition, Bruce Mitchell points out in his ‘An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England’, that in Old English it could also have past tense sendede. He notes that ‘the d of the ending –d(e) is not absorbed into the root’. Such a feature may be one of the clues to understanding how similar verbs, if not necessarily this one, developed the forms they have today.


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