Monday, March 21, 2011

we go, you go, they WENT = wtf!?

Wendan and windan

Wend, the source of go's current preterite, came from Old English wendan. The Old English verb likely descends from the PIE root *wand, based on Germanic cognates, notably Gothic wandjan. This root is the preterite stem of windan.

The ultimate source of went is windan, which had wendan as a preterite stem. Windan is the source of the modern verb wind whose preterite and past participle is wound. The original preterite of windan was *wand-, and windan had a causative form, wendan (meaning "to cause to wind", or "to cause to become wound"). So, went is derived from wendan, which is derived from windan.

The root *w- implied turning or motion, and was probably used both transitively and intransitively. Wend was originally the causative of wind and often intransitive. However, both words have been conflated for at least a thousand years due to their similarity. With this confusion, the words have influenced each others' developments. For much of their histories, wend and wind have had the sense of going, hence wend's eventually becoming synonymous with go. Wind's past tense is winded or wound


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