Sometimes especially when I am reading books or quotes, I encounter verbs ending in -th. Is that an arcaic form? How should I properly translate them?
Answer
Verbs ending in -eth are an archaic way of forming the 3rd person singular present, so for example:
sayeth => says
goeth => goes
Beyond that, I can't think of any verbs ending in -th that don't end in -eth. As J.R. points out in the comments, doth doesn't end in -eth. It is, however, still in the 3rd person singular present (i.e. equivalent to does), and I would hypothesize it comes from assimilation of doeth. In any case, it's probably safe to assume that all verbs ending in -th are in the 3rd person singular present.
No comments:
Post a Comment