-ench
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On March 27, horrificgoth posted on tumblr
(crawls on all fours with blood drenched on me) I have to do arts and crafts
resulting in 56,876 notes so far. One of them, posted Saturday 5/10 by Seebs, was
i’m more mad about this than i might otherwise be because someone pointed out the “-ench” suffix in English a while back:
drink -> drench
cling -> clench
we used to have a form for “to cause-to” on verbs. and yes, there was apparently a q verb for fire-going-out that led to “quench”.
sadly, people refuse to acknowledge my other example:
wink -> wench
The causative story is correct for drench and quench, according to the OED, as long as the "we" that used to have the form goes back to Old English:
The OED's etymology for clench is less clear about the causative morphology, but still consistent with it:
Needless to say, wench as the causative of wink is a joke.
For me the most interesting thing about (the comments on) these tumblr posts is (how they exemplify) the modern fashion for vivid noms de réseau social: annielovescuteships, orthoeatspaperslips1, lilacborrower, traggalicious, trashbaby1996, hohohomyass, big-scary-bird, hypersexual-brainvomit, testosteronetuesdays, totally-not-an-awkard-okapi, ewwcringe, …
[h/t Linda Seebach]
J.W. Brewer said,
May 12, 2025 @ 7:06 am
stink/stench fits the same phonological pattern and they are in fact etymologically related, but "stench" as a verb is obsolete and the lexeme only survives as a noun referring to the result of the verb.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 12, 2025 @ 7:09 am
Hit post too soon. This link gives some Middle English example sentences of the verb "stenchen," while noting that it was sometimes also spelled "stinchen." It does not obviously have contrasting semantics with the more common "stinken." https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED42780/
Matt McIrvin said,
May 12, 2025 @ 7:28 am
And I wonder if "cwincan" is a cognate of "extinguish" but the online dictionaries don't commit to non-Germanic cognates.
Scott P. said,
May 12, 2025 @ 8:47 am
What about blanch?
[myl: Nope…
Unless the French adopted the same causative thing from Frankish?
]
Ralph Hickok said,
May 12, 2025 @ 9:00 am
man -> mensch :)
Gregory Kusnick said,
May 12, 2025 @ 10:10 am
wring / wrench
But probably not fry / french.
seebs said,
May 12, 2025 @ 10:30 am
Yes, wink was a joke. I like to joke about constructs like tha because every so often I run into something that seems actually plausible. e.g., "emergency -> emergent" might imply "bouncy -> bount", and that's funny, but actually "bound" is right there being the word predicted by this model.
I think I actually believe stink->stench, though.
Your comment on the vivid names is fascinating because I genuinely don't notice at all anymore.
Haamu said,
May 12, 2025 @ 11:40 am
Re whether French has this:
I started wondering about stanch (and hence staunch). Piecing together several sources (I'm hampered by no OED access), I take it both may derive from Anglo-French estancher (“to check or stop the flowing of”), which maybe can be traced back to Latin stans/stantis (“standing; remaining, staying”).
Feels like causative -nch to me, but obviously only one datapoint.
CuConnacht said,
May 12, 2025 @ 2:50 pm
I can't find the reference now, but Horne Tooke derived wench from wink on the grounds that one could be had for the winking,
Tom Dawkes said,
May 12, 2025 @ 3:18 pm
@Haamu
OED gives < Old French estanchier (modern French étancher) to stop the flow of (water), stanch (blood), stop up (a leak), make (a vessel) watertight, to quench (thirst), corresponding to Provençal estancar, Spanish estancar, Portuguese estancar in similar senses (Portuguese also to exhaust, weary), Italian stancare to weary < Com. Romance *stancare, according to some scholars a contraction of popular Latin *stagnicāre, < stagnum pool, pond (whence stagnate v., stagnant adj.
But the Franzosisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch gives *stanticare, aufhalten. In other words, 'to check, hold up'.
Tom said,
May 12, 2025 @ 3:43 pm
Add another log to the fire before it quings…?
J.W. Brewer said,
May 13, 2025 @ 6:59 am
@Ralph Hickok: It would have to be mink -> mensch to fit the pattern (w/o even getting into nouns v verbs). But no doubt a just-so story explaining the semantic shift can be concocted.
David Marjanović said,
May 13, 2025 @ 10:00 am
Then it would be "blench".
Instead, borrow blank into early Romance, make a verb *blancare out of it, let that evolve in French, and you get blancher.
Close, but that's Old High German manisco, "the human one". Like this: mann "human being" > mannisk "human" > n-stem noun mannisko > Umlaut: a…i becoming e…i > general vowel reduction, and the usual change of /sk/.
That said:
"Weaseling out of work is important to learn. It's what sets humans apart from the animals! …except for weasels."
Nonono, the causative is PIE *-ye-/-yo-/.
It was made to verbs in *o-grade, meaning *a in Germanic.
Later, this same *j had three effects that show up in English: first, it lengthened the preceding consonant; then, it turned any immediately preceding *kk *gg into ch dg; then, it turned the mentioned *a into e. And then it fell off.
Former causatives without *n or *k are set, lay, dredge…
TR said,
May 13, 2025 @ 11:05 am
Dredge? OED thinks the verb is denominal, and I don't see a causative meaning.
GeorgeW said,
May 13, 2025 @ 2:36 pm
bi (spelled be) > bench. To cause one to exist on the sideline watching their teammates play. /S
Yves Rehbein said,
May 13, 2025 @ 3:21 pm
Politely doubt it. Drink is ultimately uncertain beyond Proto-Germanic. Wiktionary's PIE *dʰrenǵ- is hedging derivation from *dʰreǵ- as a "nasalized variant" citing Kroonen, who clearly implies n-infix *dʰre-n-ǵ-, while the second reference – extra hedging – makes no mistake stating "Of unknown origin" and adds "It is possible that *drenkanan is a back formation based on *drankjanan" (Orel 2003). This means this ch-ausative could be anything in origin.
Anti-causative, e.g. to drown oneself, might be of interest. To paraphrase Chris Button (I don't know what that this means): a lowly -s suffix can do a lot.
stephen said,
May 13, 2025 @ 6:43 pm
What does a henchman do? Did nobody ever hire a henchwoman?
And on another topic, what if the hireling is non-binary? Is that person a henchtrans?
Hink: According to Merriam Webster it means hesitation, faltering.
According to Wiktionary it means a reaping hook. Neither reference gives the other definition.
According to Urban Dictionary it describes suspicious material like fake IDs.
Idran said,
May 13, 2025 @ 10:46 pm
@stephen: "henchman" is a modification of the Old English compound "hengestman" from the mid-14th century: "hengest" (horse or stallion) + "man". It originally meant "person who cares for horses" but became more generic over time; by Middle English it had turned into "henxman" or "henshman" and meant "attendant for a nobleman", and then by Modern English it had become "henchman" and just meant "subordinate".
"Henchwoman" would be fine today, yeah. A nonbinary hireling wouldn't be "henchtrans" though, because "trans" isn't a gender; probably "henchperson" if you wanted to do that.
Alex B said,
May 14, 2025 @ 2:07 am
This has great potential. I'd propose
link-lench
Think-thench (teachers should tench)
blink-blench
sink-sench (as in the 1960 classic movie: Sench the Bismarck!)
David Marjanović said,
May 15, 2025 @ 9:20 am
That was a spontaneous idea of mine because it fits with drag. I'll happily retract it…
Irrelevant, because causative formation evidently remained productive – or perhaps became even more productive – in early Germanic. Once you have a strong verb *drinkaną, a weak causative verb *drankjaną pretty much inevitably follows.
The pair isn't limited to English: German trinken, tränken, where the latter is used not only for soaking cloth or even more metaphorical things, but still for leading horses or cattle to drink as well.
Like marshall, originally "farmhand in charge of horses" (mares instead of stallions, theoretically).
For real in German, if prefixed: versenken to intransitive sinken.
Andreas Johansson said,
May 15, 2025 @ 3:01 pm
Swedish has sjunka "sink (intransitive)" and sänka "sink (transitive)".