Contracted Verbs
Another small group of verbs are the so-called "contracted" verbs, named for their characteristic shortened forms alongside their regular forms:
- "lân" (from "lâzen", Modern German 'lassen', English 'to let')
- "vân" (from "vâhen", Modern German 'anfangen', English 'to begin')
- "hân" (from "hâhen", Modern German 'hängen', English 'to hang')
- "hân" (from "hâben", Modern German 'haben', English 'to have') This verb generally exhibits the contracted forms in the indicative and the uncontracted forms in the subjunctive.
Read more about this topic: Middle High German Verbs
Famous quotes containing the words contracted and/or verbs:
“The man who, from the beginning of his life, has been bathed at length in the soft atmosphere of a woman, in the smell of her hands, of her bosom, of her knees, of her hair, of her supple and floating clothes, ... has contracted from this contact a tender skin and a distinct accent, a kind of androgyny without which the harshest and most masculine genius remains, as far as perfection in art is concerned, an incomplete being.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“He crafted his writing and loved listening to those tiny explosions when the active brutality of verbs in revolution raced into sweet established nouns to send marching across the page a newly commissioned army of words-on-maneuvers, all decorated in loops, frets, and arrowlike flourishes.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)