Etymology: < Germanic -îno(m, formally the neuter of -îno- , -en suffix⁴.

Etymology: < West Germanic -innja, representing Germanic -inî.

Etymology: The form assumed in Middle English by the Old English -an, the termination of the nominative, accusative, and dative plural of nouns of the weak declension, as in oxa (masculine), ox, plural oxan; tunge (feminine), tongue, plural tungan; éare (neuter), ear, plural éaran.In origin the suffix belonged to the stem; but as in Old English the nominative singular of these nouns ended in -a , -e (levelled in Middle English to -e ), while the Old English -an of the oblique cases singular became -e in Middle English, the termination -en came to be regarded as a formative of the plural, and its use was extended in southern Middle English to many other words of Old English and French origin. It was also added to the remains of other old plurals, as brether , childer (Old English cildru ), ky (Old English cý ), whence the modern brethren , plural of brother n., children , plural of child n., kine , plural of cow n.¹ Apart from these the sole surviving representative (in standard English) of this inflection is oxen , plural of ox n.; but hosen (Old English hosan , plural of hose n.) continued in use until 17th cent. In southern and south midland dialects the plurals in -en are still of frequent occurrence.

Etymology: Cognate with Old Saxon -in , Old High German -în (German -en ), Old Norse -in , Gothic -eina- < Germanic -īno- < the same Indo-European base as ancient Greek -ῑνο- , classical Latin -īno- (see -ine suffix¹). In Germanic the adjectives so formed chiefly indicate the material of which a thing is composed. Of the many words of this formation which existed in Old English scarcely any survive in modern use; but the suffix was extensively applied in Middle English to form new derivatives. Some of these took the place of Old English words, from which they formally differ only by the absence of umlaut; compare Old English gylden gilden adj. with modern English golden adj., Old English stǽnen (early Middle English stenen ) with Middle English and dialect stonen adj. From the 16th cent. onwards there has been in literary English a growing tendency to discard these adjectives for the attributive use of the noun, as in ‘a gold watch’; hence many of them have become wholly obsolete, and others (as golden adj., silvern adj.) are seldom used except metaphorically, or with rhetorical emphasis. It is only in a few cases (e.g. wooden adj., woollen adj., earthen adj., wheaten adj.) that these words are still familiarly used in their literal sense. In south-western dialects, however, the suffix is of common occurrence, being added without restriction to all nouns denoting the material of which anything is composed, as in glazen adj., steelen adj., tinnen adj., papern adj., etc.

Etymology: Most of the words in sense 1 seem to have been formed in late Middle English or early modern English, on the analogy of a few verbs which came down from Old English or were adopted from Old Norse; e.g. fasten v. < Old English fæstnian ; brighten v. < Old Northumbrian berhtnia ; harden v. < Old Norse harðna . In Germanic there are two classes of verbs formed upon the ‘weak’ or lengthened stems of adjectives (suffix -on- ): the intransitive (or in sense passive) verbs which in Gothic make the infinitive in -nan , and the past tense in -ôda ; e.g. fullnan to be filled ( < fullan- full); gabignan to be rich ( < gabigan- rich); managnan to abound ( < managan- many); the originally transitive verbs in Old Germanic -(i)nôjan , e.g. Old High German festinōn to fasten, < feston- ( < fastjon- ) fast. In English these two classes of verbs can scarcely be discriminated with precision, but in most cases the intransitive sense (as in deepen v. ‘become deeper’) appears to be derived from the transitive sense (as in deepen v. ‘make deeper’). In Germanic nouns both of the weak and the strong declension gave rise to intransitive verbs in -(i)nôjan , and this formation is represented by a few examples in Old English, such as hlystnian listen v. In the 14th cent. some additional verbs occur, formed apparently on the analogy of these, as happen v., threaten v. The majority of English words < noun + -en suffix⁵, however, such as heighten v., lengthen v., strengthen v., hearten v., barken v., appear first in modern English, and seem to be due to the analogy of the verbs < adjectives.In one or two cases (e.g. waken v.) the suffix -en represents Germanic -na-, the formative of the present stem in certain strong verbs.

Etymology: Old English -en , corresponding to Old Frisian -en , Old Saxon -an , (Middle) Dutch -en , Old High German -an (Middle High German, German -en ), Old Norse -enn , -inn (Swedish -en ), Gothic -ans < primitive Germanic -inaz , -anaz , of which some languages generalized one and some the other, the first type being represented by mutated forms in Old English, e.g. cymen ( < *kuminaz ), past participle of cuman come v., beside cumen ( < *kumanaz-).