I was faced with the prospect of having to pay (what is for my circumstances, anyway) an exorbitant amount of money for health insurance (I turned 65 and so began having to deal with parts and pieces of Medicare and Medicaid and who knows what). In any event, I stopped as many of my outgoing payments as I could. As it turns out, Deo gratias, the reality is much more congenial than the prospect was, so the odd five or ten dollars here or there don't amount to catastrophic over-spending. Which is explanation for why I was so absurdly happy to see Eleanor Parker's Sunday email return to my inbox this morning. Haven't had a chance yet to read it.
She discusses an extract from Aelfric's De Temporibus Anni, about the 'running' of the Sun and our consequent seasons. A brief passage:
... Ælfric here uses a wonderful Old English verb, one word for what we need to translate with five: winterlæcan, which means 'to draw near to winter', 'to become winter'. It works with the pronoun hit, much like we might say 'it's raining' or 'it's getting dark': hit winterlæcð, 'it's becoming winter'. The -læcan suffix produced a number of useful Old English verbs denoting a process of gradual 'becoming', such as cuðlæcan, 'to become friendly with', or rihtlæcan, 'to become more right, correct, improve'. They're all now obsolete, although the suffix is connected to one word we would recognise, acknowledge, literally 'to come to know'....
Lovely, lovely; Dr Parker's Patreon page is here. The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary prose on quite enthusiastically; "the suffix ceases to be productive in Middle English", alas.
Examples of de-adjectival formations are cūðlǣcan to become known, be friendly with ( < couth adj.; compare cūðlic couthly adj.), efenlǣcan evenleche v. ( < even adj.1; compare efenlic evenly adj.), nēahlǣcan neighleche v. ( < nigh adj.; compare nēahlic near, neighbouring: see nighly adv.), rihtlǣcan rightleche v. ( < right adj.; compare rihtlic right, correct: see rightly adv.); less frequent are denominal formations, e.g. loflǣcan to praise ( < lof n.; compare loflic laudable), sumorlǣcan to draw near to summer ( < summer n.1; compare sumorlic summerly adj.), winterlǣcan to draw near to winter ( < winter n.1; compare winterlic winterly adj.); occasional formations are also attested from other parts of speech, e.g. edlǣcan to repeat ( < ed- prefix), gesamodlǣcan to bring together ( < samed adv.; compare samodlīce together), ðæslǣcan to agree with, be suitable ( < thes adv.; compare ðæslic suitable, congruous). A small number of these Old English verbs survived into Middle English, e.g. cuðleche to be friendly with, evenleche v., neighleche v., rightleche v.; these are all attested (among other sources) in texts written in the so-called ‘AB language’ of the south-west midlands... The suffix ceases to be productive in Middle English.
I'm going to have to find a grammar....
LDVM
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