Frequentative

#suffix #etymology #linguistics Published: 2021-11-02

A frequentative form of a word is a grammatical formation that indicates the frequent repetition of an action. Unfortunately, I could not find a corresponding Japanese word (反復相 is a bit similar, but this is one of the grammatical aspects, not the historical formation of the word).

I was surprised to find that there are so many frequentative forms in English, which more or less make sense explicitly or implicitly. They are basically formed with either the suffix “-le” or “-er” (have a quick look at a list of frequentative verbs). In this post, I’ll share several more common words that I personally find interesting, using the Oxford English Dictionary’s advanced search. For today, I’ll just show you a few good examples of words ending in -le (I’ll definitely update this post later).

I searched for words that

• include the term “frequentative” in their etymology
• have the suffix “-le” in their headword

gamble

I found it interesting that the word “gamble” is the frequantative form of “game”. From this perspective, this word means “to play games repeatedly”, and makes sense a lot to me. The “-b-“ part in gamble is considered to be an excrescent¹ consonant.

chuckle

To chuckle means “to laugh in a suppressed manner”, and to chuck means “to make a short, distinct sound” (or even “to laugh” as an obsolete meaning).

shuffle

This word is said to be the combination of the words “-le” and “shove”, the latter of which means “to move up or down by pushing”, according to one definition in the OED. Shuffling a deck of cards is the process of repeting this exact action.

wrestle

As you probably know, “wrest” means “to pull forcefully”, which probably happens a lot in a wrestling match (right?).

…

---