-en

Pronunciation

• usually IPA: /É™n/
• after also IPA: /nÌ©/
• In many accents, -en routinely gives up its vowel syllable when given additional suffixes. For example, fatten + -ing can be or .
• Even in many accents where this habitual syllable deletion is less usual, the syllable loss may still predominate for certain inflections that have become common words in their own right, such as gardener .
• Syllable loss may be habitually prevented to avoid merging with more deeply entrenched inflections, such as for keeping the generic inflection lightening from being pronounced identically to the established term lightning (notice the e is no longer written), even if they both independently derived from a combination of lighten + -ing.
• But syllable loss may resume with inflections that are not in danger of merging with an established word, such as enlightening, which can be pronounced or because enlightning is not a common word outside of slang.

From Middle English -n, -en, past participle ending of strong verbs (compare Middle English take(n), took, taken: "take, took, taken"), from Old Norse -inn, past participle ending of strong verbs (compare Old Norse taka, tōk, takinn: "take, took, taken"). From Proto-Norse *-īna-, from Proto-Germanic *-īnaz (cf. Etymology 4, below). Replaced the native past participle ending of strong verbs (from Old English -en) in some words, which had weakened to -e or disappeared (compare Southern Middle English do(n), dud(e), ydo : "do, did, done"), but not in others (compare cume(n), com, ycume: "come, came, come").

Full definition of -en

Suffix

1. Denotes the past participle form when attached to a verb.As in take, taken; forgive, forgiven; prove, provenThe -en suffix is also used formally to denote any English past participle, even if it does not use the suffix.Such a use may be described formally as cook + -en → cooked
2. Denotes a quasi-past participle or participle-like adjective when attached to a noun or verb.As in forken ("forked")

Derived terms

From Proto-Germanic.

From Middle English -n (in words ending in a vowel: flee: fleen "flea: fleas") and -en. Noun plural marker (predominantly in Southern dialects of Middle English), from Old English Nominative-Accusative plural ending of Old English declension#Weak nouns (n-stem declension); compare nama: naman (masc.) "name: names"; hlǣfdige: hlǣfdigan (fem.) "lady: ladies"; ēare: ēaran (neut.) "ear: ears". Assisted by M.E. dative plural ending -n, -en from late O.E. -un, -on, weakened form of earlier -um. Akin to Old High German n-stem (compare namo: namon "name: names"), Latin n-stem (compare homo: homin-)

Suffix

1. Can be used to denote the plural form of a small number of English words, the majority of whose etymology goes back to the N-stem (i.e. Weak noun) declension of Germanic languages.Examples: aurochs, aurochsenThe Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language by David Crystal (1995, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521401798), page 200

Usage notes

No longer productive, outside of occasional humorous use, particularly in computer hacker subculture. Notable examples are boxen, Unixen, VAXen.

Derived terms

• See also:

from Middle English -(e)nen, -(e)nien, from Old English -nian, from Proto-Germanic *-inōną. Cognate with Danish -ne, Swedish -na, Icelandic -na.

Suffix

1. When attached to certain adjectives, it formed a transitive verb whose meaning is, to make (adjective). Usually, the verb is ergative, sometimes not. The same construction could also be done to certain (fewer) nouns, as, strengthen, in which case the verb means roughly, to give (noun) to.

Usage notes

Currently not very productive; recent coinages such as embiggen are often humorous or nonce words.

Derived terms

From Middle English -en, from Old English -en, from Proto-Germanic *-Ä«naz; suffix meaning "made of, consisting of, having the qualities of" applied to nouns to form adjectives. Akin to Dutch -en, German -en, Icelandic -inn, Latin -Ä«nus. See -ine.

Alternative forms

• -in

Suffix

1. Suffix meaning "pertaining to", "having the qualities of", "resembling", "like".elfin, wolven, peachen
2. When attached to certain nouns that are the names of a material, it forms an adjective whose meaning is, made of (noun). This is a formative pattern with many obsolescent remnants. Changes in the form of the root noun, and the dropping of the "e" in the suffix occur. There are also orphan formations whose root has been lost to the current language.Current examples: wood, wooden; gold, golden; brass, brazenObsolete examples: bronze, bronzen; silver, silvernOrphan examples: linen (flax was called lin).

Derived terms

From Middle English, from Old English -en, from the neuter form of -en#Etymology_4|-en

4

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Suffix

1. Used to form the diminutives of certain nounschickenmaidenkitten

From Middle English -en, a blending of Old English infintives -an and -n, from Proto-Germanic *-anÄ….

Suffix

1. (obsolete) Used to form the infinitive of verbs.
• 1592, William Shakespeare, Richard III:The Sonne compell'd, beene Butcher to the Sire...
• 1599, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene:As gentle Shepheard in sweete euen-tide, When ruddy Phoebus gins to welke in west, High on an hill, his flocke to vewen wide ...
• 1844, William Barnes, “Bringen Wonne Gwäin O' Zundays”, in Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect.
2. (obsolete) Used to form the third person plural present tense of verbs.

Usage notes

Began to fade towards the 15th Century, used primarily in Early Modern English to show archaic or dialectal speech.

The weakening and loss of the marker caused some verbs to blend with verbs marked by Etymology 3; for example Middle English 'learen' (to teach) blended with 'learnen' (to learn), resulting in learn having a (dialectal) double meaning.