| 释义 |
▪ I. -en, suffix1
:—OTeut. -îno(m, formally the neut. of -îno-, -en4, is used to form diminutives from ns. (esp. names of animals), as in chicken n.1, kitten, maiden, ME. ticchen kid; also in ME. stucchen small piece.
▪ II. -en, suffix2
:—WGer. -innja, repr. OTeut. -inî, occurs in several OE. fem. ns., a few of which have survived into mod. Eng.
1. It is used to form feminines from ns. denoting male persons or animals, as in OE. gyden goddess (f. god), mynecen nun (f. munuc monk), wylfen she-wolf (f. wulf wolf). The only surviving instance of this use is vixen female fox. 2. It is added in a few instances to the stem of a vb. or to that of a verbal-abstract n., as in burden n., burian, OE. rǽden condition.
▪ III. -en, suffix3
the form assumed in ME. by the OE. -an, the termination of the nom., accus., and dat. plural of ns. of the weak declension, as in oxa masc., ox, pl. oxan; tunge fem., tongue, pl. tungan; éare neut., ear, pl. éaran. In origin the suffix belonged to the stem; but as in OE. the nom. sing. of these ns. ended in -a, -e (levelled in ME. to -e), while the OE. -an of the oblique cases sing. became -e in ME., the termination -en came to be regarded as a formative of the plural, and its use was extended in southern ME. to many other words of OE. and Fr. origin. It was also added to the remains of other old plurals, as brether, childer (OE. cildru), ky (OE. cý), whence the modern brethren, children, kine. Apart from these the sole surviving representative (in standard Eng.) of this inflexion is ox-en; but hos-en (OE. hosan) continued in use until 17th c. In southern and south midland dialects the plurals in -en are still of frequent occurrence.
▪ IV. -en, suffix4
(reduced to -n after r in unstressed syllables), corresponds to OS. -in, OHG. -în (Ger. -en), ON. -in, Goth. -eina-:—OTeut -īno-, = Gr. -ῑνο-, L. -īno- (see -ine), added to noun-stems to form adjs. with sense ‘pertaining to, of the nature of’. In Teut. the adjs. so formed chiefly indicate the material of which a thing is composed. Of the many words of this formation which existed in OE. scarcely any survive in mod. use; but the suffix was extensively applied in ME. to form new derivatives. Some of these took the place of OE. words, from which they formally differ only by the absence of umlaut; compare OE. gylden with mod.Eng. golden, OE. stǽnen (early ME. stenen) with ME. and dial. stonen, made of stone. From 16th c. onwards there has been in literary English a growing tendency to discard these adjs. for the attrib. use of the n., as in ‘a gold watch’; hence many of them have become wholly obs., and others (as golden, silvern) are seldom used except metaphorically, or with rhetorical emphasis. It is only in a few cases (e.g. wooden, woollen, earthen, wheaten) that these words are still familiarly used in their lit. sense. In s.w. dialects, however, the suffix is of common occurrence, being added without restriction to all ns. denoting the material of which anything is composed, as in glassen, steelen, tinnen, papern, etc.
▪ V. -en, suffix5
forming verbs.
1. from adjs., as darken, deepen, harden, madden, moisten, widen. Most of the words of this type seem to have been formed in late ME. or early mod.Eng., on the analogy of a few verbs which came down from OE. or were adopted from ON.; e.g. fasten:—OE. fæstnian; ? brighten:—ONorthumb. berhtnia; harden:—ON. harðna. In Teut. there are two classes of vbs. formed upon the ‘weak’ or lengthened stems of adjs. (suffix -on-): (a) the intransitive (or in sense pass.) vbs. which in Goth. make the inf. in -nan, and the pa. tense in -ôda; e.g. fullnan to be filled, f. fullan- full; gabignan to be rich, f. gabigan- rich; managnan to abound, f. managan- many; (b) the originally trans. vbs. in OTeut. (i)nôjan, e.g. OHG. festinôn to fasten, f. feston- (:—fastjon-) fast. In Eng. these two classes of vbs. can scarcely be discriminated with precision, but in most cases the intr. sense (as in deepen = ‘become deeper’) appears to be derived from the trans. sense (as in deepen = ‘make deeper’).
2. from ns. In OTeut. ns. both of the weak and the strong declension gave rise to intr. verbs in -(i)nôjan, and this formation is represented by a few examples in OE., such as hlystnian to listen. In 14th c. some additional vbs. occur, formed app. on the analogy of these, as happen, threaten. The majority of Eng. words f. n. + -en, however, such as heighten, lengthen, strengthen, hearten, barken, appear first in mod.Eng., and seem to be due to the analogy of the verbs f. adjs.
3. In one or two cases (e.g. waken) the suffix -en represents OTeut. -na-, the formative of the present stem in certain strong verbs.
▪ VI. -en, suffix6
the ending of the past participle of many strong verbs, as broken, spoken, sunken. OE. -en, corresp. to OFris, -en, OS. -an, (M)Du. -en, OHG. -an (MHG., G. -en), ON. -enn, -inn (Sw. -en), Goth. -ans:—prim. Germ. -inaz, -anaz (Indo-Eur. -énos, -ónos), of which some languages generalized one and some the other, the first type being represented by mutated forms in OE., eg. cymen (:—*kuminaz), pa. pple. of cuman to come, beside cumen (:—*kumanaz-). |