rædan

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Old English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From a merger of two verbs, which came to be pronounced the same in the present tense and the infinitive due to regular sound change:

The past tense form reordon preserves the zero-grade reduplicated plural stem *re-rd-un.

Pronunciation

Verb

rǣdan

  1. to read
    • c. 992, Ælfric, "Midlent Sunday"
      Nis nā ġenōg þæt þū stafas sċēawiġe būtan þū hīe ēac rǣde and þæt andġiet understande.
      It is not enough that you look at letters unless you also read them and understand the meaning.
  2. to advise
  3. to guess
  4. to interpret, explain
    swefn rǣdanto interpret a dream
  5. to decide

Usage notes

  • The verb was originally strong class 7, but changed to weak class 1 in later Old English.
  • The reduplicated past tense forms reord, reorde, reordon were almost completely absent in West Saxon, mostly appearing in Anglian texts. Nonetheless, it was still more common to see the weak class 1 conjugation than the strong class 7 conjugation in Anglian.

Conjugation

Strong class 7 conjugation:

Weak class 1 conjugation:

Derived terms

Descendants

References