-ench
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On March 27, horrificgoth posted on tumblr
(crawls on all fours with blood drenched on me) I have to do arts and crafts
resulting in 56,876 notes so far. One of them, posted Saturday 5/10 by Seebs, was
i’m more mad about this than i might otherwise be because someone pointed out the “-ench” suffix in English a while back:
drink -> drench
cling -> clench
we used to have a form for “to cause-to” on verbs. and yes, there was apparently a q verb for fire-going-out that led to “quench”.
sadly, people refuse to acknowledge my other example:
wink -> wench
The causative story is correct for drench and quench, according to the OED, as long as the "we" that used to have the form goes back to Old English:
The OED's etymology for clench is less clear about the causative morphology, but still consistent with it:
Needless to say, wench as the causative of wink is a joke.
For me the most interesting thing about (the comments on) these tumblr posts is (how they exemplify) the modern fashion for vivid noms de réseau social: annielovescuteships, orthoeatspaperslips1, lilacborrower, traggalicious, trashbaby1996, hohohomyass, big-scary-bird, hypersexual-brainvomit, testosteronetuesdays, totally-not-an-awkard-okapi, ewwcringe, …
[h/t Linda Seebach]
J.W. Brewer said,
May 12, 2025 @ 7:06 am
stink/stench fits the same phonological pattern and they are in fact etymologically related, but "stench" as a verb is obsolete and the lexeme only survives as a noun referring to the result of the verb.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 12, 2025 @ 7:09 am
Hit post too soon. This link gives some Middle English example sentences of the verb "stenchen," while noting that it was sometimes also spelled "stinchen." It does not obviously have contrasting semantics with the more common "stinken." https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED42780/
Matt McIrvin said,
May 12, 2025 @ 7:28 am
And I wonder if "cwincan" is a cognate of "extinguish" but the online dictionaries don't commit to non-Germanic cognates.
Scott P. said,
May 12, 2025 @ 8:47 am
What about blanch?
[myl: Nope…
Unless the French adopted the same causative thing from Frankish?
]
Ralph Hickok said,
May 12, 2025 @ 9:00 am
man -> mensch :)
Gregory Kusnick said,
May 12, 2025 @ 10:10 am
wring / wrench
But probably not fry / french.
seebs said,
May 12, 2025 @ 10:30 am
Yes, wink was a joke. I like to joke about constructs like tha because every so often I run into something that seems actually plausible. e.g., "emergency -> emergent" might imply "bouncy -> bount", and that's funny, but actually "bound" is right there being the word predicted by this model.
I think I actually believe stink->stench, though.
Your comment on the vivid names is fascinating because I genuinely don't notice at all anymore.