weak verb
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.67 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
1
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One of a class of verbs which use a dental suffix appended to the stem to indicate the past tense.
noun
One of a class of verbs which use a dental suffix appended to the stem to indicate the past tense.
Example Sentences
- "A Weak Verb adds d, ed, or t, to the Present Tense, to make the Past Tense; as, invite, invited; betray, betrayed; step, stept."
- "Storage clearly is assumed for irregular verb forms. But what about regular or weak verb forms?"
- "Three basic root consonant classes exist: the strong verb, roots with weak initial root consonant (I-weak verbs), roots with weak final consonants (III-weak verbs), and a composite class..."
Etymology
Calque of German schwaches Verb (19th c.). Jacob Grimm called “weak” those classes of conjugation and declension which had lost more distinctions between forms or grammatical categories. The later use of Semitic is a semantic loan from Arabic فِعْل مُعْتَلّ (fiʕl muʕtall).
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Linguistics.