Help with Vocabulary 1

 

The Room of Acquirement*

“Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book?" asked Mrs. Dodypol.
"It depends," says I, "how much you used the dictionary before you read it.”
― Alexander Theroux, Darconville’s Cat

Let's face it, learning new vocabulary is a pain in the neck for many of us.  You have to develop your own vocabulary retention capabilities, besides those that your language teacher -- because this isn't just an issue in English -- provides you with.  Thinking back to our Anglo-Saxon linguistic ancestors, we realize that as a Germanic language and like nearly all of the other Germanic languages, verbs ended in /-en/ just as they do in modern German (a second cousin), Dutch (a first cousin) and Frisian (a double cousin or just about), and were highly inflected.  The Anglo-Saxons ruled England just after the Romans pulled out in the 5th century until (officially) 1066 with the Norman invasion and conquest of the island, although I cannot help but believe that Anglo-Saxon continued to be in use by the common people for a much longer period.  The Anglo-Saxon / Norman French cleavage continued on until the 15th century, when King Henry IV was the first to speak in what was clearly by then the English language, albeit Middle English (M.E.).

But what does all this have to do with you?

English has retained a lot of Anglo-Saxon (A.S.) words in it.  Many one-syllable words have stay in the English language from Anglo-Saxon (Lippmann, 2009) among which the majority of the words in this very sentence:  English, has, a, of, Anglo, Saxon, word, in, it, many, one, have, the, from, among, which, and this.  They may have gone through some radical spelling changes, dropping archaic lettering (the, which) or going through slight modifications or simplifications, but nonetheless they remain steadfastly A.S.

I have compiled and collated a list of verbs which all have a typical A.S. ending.  In addition to these, I have provided their noun and adjectival forms to try and help you learn them.  Take a look at the full chart:

	ADJECTIVE	VERB	NOUN
	thick	thicken ≠	thickness
	thin	thin	thinness
	wide	widen =	width
	broad	broaden	breadth
	deep	deepen	depth
	dead	deaden	death
	weak	weaken ≠	weakness
	strong	strengthen	strength
	long	lengthen ≠	length
	short	shorten	shortness
	hasty	hasten	haste
	tight	tighten ≠	tightness
	loose	loosen =	looseness
	slack	slacken	slack
	fat	fatten	fat
	straight	straighten	straightness
	light	lighten	light/lightness
	bright	brighten ≠	brightness
	dark	darken	darkness
	white	whiten ≠	whiteness
	black	blacken	blackness
	red	redden	redness
	moist	moisten	moistness
	fresh	freshen	freshness
	soft	soften ≠	softness
	hard	harden	hardness
	stiff	stiffen	stiffness
	sweet	sweeten	sweetness
	quick	quicken	quickness
	sad	sadden	sadness
	damp	dampen	dampness
	flat	flatten	flatness
	ripe	ripen	ripeness
	sick	sicken	sickness
	quiet	quieten (GB)	quietness
	sharp	sharpen	sharpness
	awake	Awaken	=> awakening
	worse	worsen	worst
	less	lessen	least
	fastened                 <=	fasten	=> fastening
	enlightened           <=	enlighten	=> enlightenment

But what on earth do all of these colors and symbols mean.  Time to take the chart apart and look at the different categories.

 Antonyms and Synonyms

	thick	thicken ≠	thickness
	thin	thin	thinness
	wide	widen =	width
	broad	broaden	breath
	weak	weaken ≠	weakness
	strong	strengthen	strength
	long	lengthen ≠	length
	short	shorten	shortness
	tight	tighten ≠	tightness
	loose	loosen =	looseness
	slack	slacken	slack
	light	lighten ≈	light/lightness1
	bright	brighten ≠	brightness
	dark	darken	darkness
	white	whiten ≠	whiteness
	black	blacken	blackness
	soft	soften ≠	softness
	hard	harden	hardness

Sometimes it’s easy to memorize words by learning their antonyms:  increase / decrease, clean/dirty, inside/outside, upstairs/downstairs, and so on.  The same goes for synonyms:  much/many, under/below, over/above and so on.

¹Light can describe illumination, a quality of a color, or a weight.  In its noun form this difference is highlighted in the presence of two different nouns:  light refers to illumination and quality of a color, but lightness refers to weight, as in Milan Kundera’s magnificent novel, translated into English as The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí).

Verbs from Adjectives

	thick	thicken ≠	thickness
	wide	widen =	width
	broad	broaden	breadth
	deep	deepen	depth
	weak	weaken ≠	weakness
	short	shorten	shortness
	tight	tighten ≠	tightness
	loose	loosen =	looseness
	straight	straighten	straightness
	light	lighten	light/lightness
	bright	brighten ≠	brightness
	dark	darken	darkness
	white	whiten ≠	whiteness
	black	blacken	blackness
	red	redden	redness
	moist	moisten	moistness
	fresh	freshen	freshness
	soft	soften ≠	softness
	hard	harden	hardness
	stiff	stiffen	stiffness
	sweet	sweeten	sweetness
	quick	quicken	quickness
	sad	sadden	sadness
	damp	dampen	dampness
	flat	flatten	flatness
	ripe	ripen	ripeness
	sick	sicken	sickness
	quiet	quieten (GB)	quietness
	sharp	sharpen	sharpness
	awake	awaken	---
	worse	worsen	worst
	less	lessen	least
	dead	deaden	death

The longest group contains verbs are formed by adding /-en/ to the adjectival roots to make the verb.  Despite the length of this category, it actually might be the easiest to use since you just have to add a syllable.

Verbs from Nouns

	strong	strengthen	strength
	fastened	fasten	fastening
	long	lengthen	length
	hasty	hasten	haste

This rather short and easily memorized category of words indicates the opposite of the previous category, meaning that the noun is the root of the verb and not the adjective.

Nouns Ending in /-th/ [Θ]

	wide	widen =	width
	broad	broaden	breadth
	deep	deepen	depth
	dead	deaden	death
	strong	strengthen	strength
	long	lengthen ≠	length

Words ending in /-th/ have been proven to have come directly from a Germanic (i.e. A.S.) source, tracing their origins back to M.E. –th(e), A.S. -thu / -tho / -th; similar to Modern German /-te/ and Gothic  /-itha/ suffixes.  Wide used to be wideness until it was associated with broad so much that the suffix was changed to /-th/ and the final /-e/ dropped for pronunciation’s sake.  Dr. Johnson² called width substituted for wideness, “a low word.”

Still, you can learn and retain these words thanks to their very Anglo-Saxon /-th/.

²Online Etymology Dictionary.  Douglas Harper, Historian.  26 November 2015.

Nouns Ending in Anglo-Saxon -ness

	thick	thicken ≠	thickness
	thin	thin	thinness
	weak	weaken ≠	weakness
	short	shorten	shortness
	tight	tighten ≠	tightness
	loose	loosen =	looseness
	straight	straighten	straightness
	light	lighten	light/lightness
	bright	brighten ≠	brightness
	dark	darken	darkness
	white	whiten ≠	whiteness
	black	blacken	blackness
	red	redden	redness
	moist	moisten	moistness
	fresh	freshen	freshness
	soft	soften ≠	softness
	hard	harden	hardness
	stiff	stiffen	stiffness
	sweet	sweeten	sweetness
	quick	quicken	quickness
	sad	sadden	sadness
	damp	dampen	dampness
	flat	flatten	flatness
	ripe	ripen	ripeness
	sick	sicken	sickness
	quiet	quieten (GB)	quietness
	sharp	sharpen	sharpness

This one is an interesting case.  My friend from college, Dr. Dawn Behne, currently a research professor at NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, wrote her master’s thesis on this theme.  She proved scientifically that the suffixes /-ness/ and /-ity/ were used, in order, with Germanic- and Latinate-origin words.  Her work on this subject helped me to help you identify this group of words, where the verbs ending in /-en/ form their nouns by adding /-ness/ to the adjectival root.

And of Course the Exceptions…

	thin3	thin	thinness
	fastened                <=	fasten4	=> fastening
	enlightened           <=	enlighten	=> enlightenment
	slack5	slacken	slack
	fat5	fatten	fat
	quiet	quieten (GB)6	quietness
	awake	awaken7	=> awakening

³Thin already ends with an /n/ so it is unnecessary to add a new one.  However, in M.E., the verb was indeed thynnen which puts it smack dab into this chart.

⁴Fasten and enlightened are close relatives of the adjectives fast (here meaning “resistant”) and light (here meaning “brilliant”).  However the verbs, though like thin were originally longer (M.E. fastenen and enlightenen) gave rise to the adjectives and nouns on either side of them. 

⁵Slack and fat are invariable between the adjective and the noun, but add A.S. /-en/ to form their verbs.

⁶Quieten is an archaic verb that is still in use in Great Britain and other parts of the world closer to British English.  The verb in American English is simply to quiet (down), nearly always associated with its postpositional particle.

⁷Awake and awaken have no original form of the noun so the present participle is used, similar to fasten.  However, it is different from the latter in that it does have a proper adjectival form.

Bibliography

Lippmann, N.  Sound & Rhythm. Understanding Spoken English. Firenze University Press, 2009.

Website references are given as hyperlinks in the text.

*The correct word of course is acquisition, but I couldn't resist making this ever so subtle change to it to pay homage to the tremendous vocabulary talents of J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series and her wondrous invention of The Room of Requirement, hence the play on words.  The muggle in me salutes her!