Umlaut

(This article was originally written by AtterCleanser44)

This page lists all the words gotten from others through a process called umlaut (also known as i-mutation). An example of a word gotten from umlaut is bleed, which is clearly linked to blood. Umlaut is now a wholly dead process in English, but many remnants can be found in the present speech. Because sound changes have beclouded many of the original links, the Old English forms are given as well. All forms that are no longer used in current standard speech are put in bold. A (*) shows that a form has been reconstructed and is not attested in New English.

Note that a word such as song, notwithstanding its obvious link to sing, is not an example of umlaut; rather, it is gotten from a process called ablaut.

Also, the word umlaut itself is from German; the native equivalent would be something like umbloud, wherein umb means around, and loud means noise.

Vowel changes
The changes gotten from umlaut can be summarized thus:

Notes:


 * OE a before the nasal consonants (m and n) became e instead, e.g., mann (human) - menn.
 * There seem to be many exceptions in which an OE word with o yielded e instead of y. The reason for this oddity is that the earlier form had u, e.g., OE gold had u in Proto-Germanic, whence the derivative gyldan (gild) did not have e.
 * The mutated vowels ie and īe later changed into y and ȳ, respectively, and the later forms will be used here.

Plural forms
Technically, the vowel change was originally not only a characteristic sign of the plural. In Old English, the vowel change was also found in the dative singular, and not all case forms in the plural showed such change. Nonetheless, this vowel change is now seen as a sign of the plural, so for convenience' sake, it is treated as such for the Old English forms.

Notes:


 * OE brēc (which meant breeches) was the plural of the unattested brōc and later became breech. The form survived for some time, but is now wholly displaced by breeches, a double plural.
 * OE brōþor (meaning brother) generally showed mutation only in the dative singular; the form brēþer was seldom found in the plural and appears to have been formed by analogy with nouns with vowel mutation in both the plural nominative and the dative singular. The mutated plural, brether, later was used with the -en plural ending, which yielded brethren, a double plural, and it is now used as the plural of brother only in some meanings.
 * OE byrig, a variant of byrg, lives on as bury in place names such as Canterbury. In these names, however, byrig represented not the plural but the dative singular, as many place names were often used in the dative.
 * The mutated plural of cow became kye, which is still used in some dialects. In standard speech, the -en plural ending was later added, which yielded kine, a double plural, but it is now archaic.
 * OE ding, a variant of dyng, was the dative singular of the unattested dung (meaning dungeon), but the plural nominative is unattested.
 * OE fyrh was the dative singular of furh (furrow), but the plural nominative is unattested.
 * OE þrūh (meaning pipe or tomb) showed the expected vowel change in þrȳh, the dative singular, though it is not attested in the nominative plural. The word later became through and is found in some dialects with the meaning of horizontal gravestone.
 * OE wifmann was simply a compound of wīf (meaning woman; the word itself became wife) and mann (meaning human), but the present form is special, as the plural shows a vowel change in both syllables of the word. The change in the first syllable, however, is not an example of umlaut; rather, the vowel in the singular was due to other sound changes, and the vowel in the plural is a remnant of the original vowel. The change of man to men, on the other hand, is an example of umlaut.

Verbs
Verbs gotten from nouns:

Notes:


 * The OE verb ǣlan has not survived in its base form, but it lives on in the derivative anneal (OE onǣlan).
 * Boot meaning remedy is now archaic, but it is still found in the phrase to boot.
 * Kemb, the verbal derivative of comb is still found in the past participle adjective kempt (neat, tidy).
 * The modern word dot seems to have come from Old English dott (meaning head of a boil), though it is not attested at all in Middle English and begins to be attested again in the late 16th century. The dialectal verb dit meaning close is from Old English dyttan and may be derived from dott.
 * It is unclear whether OE drēam is the source of the modern word dream, as the meaning of dream is unattested in OE (though it is still possible that it was present, but simply unattested). That the word came to mean sleeping vision was due to or strengthened by Old Norse influence.
 * OE flēdan is attested in the derivative oferflēdan (overflow) and the adjective fiþerflēdende (flowing in four parts). The base verb is attested in Middle English as fleden.
 * OE myldan and myrþran are attested only in bemyldan and formyrþran.
 * The modern word murder shows a consonantal shift that was likely strengthened by Anglo-Norman forms; the shift may still be native, however, as seen in burden, OE byrþen.
 * The word sale corresponds to sell as tale does to tell, but sale is a borrowing from Old Norse rather than an Old English word inherited from Proto-Germanic. However, it seems that if the word had been passed on to Old English and had survived up to New English, it would have still become sale.
 * OE þeccan would have normally yielded thetch (which variant lived up to Early New English), but the verb's vowel was later influenced by the noun's vowel, and so the verb became thatch. The noun also became thatch from influence of the verb.
 * The vowel in tellan is based on an older form that had æ.

Verbs gotten from adjectives:

Notes:


 * The word couth used in standard speech is not a survival of the original adjective but a backformation from uncouth, which originally meant unknown and now means unrefined.
 * The verb file meaning corrupt is no longer used, but it is commonly found in the derivative defile.
 * OE fūht would have become fought (rhyming with drought).
 * OE sōm is attested only in gesōm (unified).
 * The modern verb seem is a borrowing from Old Norse, but is ultimately connected to the adjective, as it originally meant be suitable and gradually came to mean appear.
 * OE strengan is attested only in gestrengan and ætstrengan (deforce).

Nouns
Nouns gotten from adjectives with the addition of the -th suffix.

Notes:


 * The OE noun fǣhþu would have become faught; the cluster hþ became ht in Middle English, as seen in height (OE hēhþo) and sight (OE sihþ), and the vowel would have changed to yield faught, as seen in the Middle English word aughte (OE ǣht meaning possession).
 * Sleuth was later replaced by sloth, which was formed directly from slow in Middle English.

Other nouns:

Notes:


 * Bread was later replaced with breadth by analogy with nouns such as depth, strength, and length. It is still found in waybread, a name for the Eurasian plantain.

Feminine nouns made with the -en suffix:

Notes:


 * The only remnant of the Germanic feminine ending is vixen, which is the feminine of fox and is gotten from the unattested OE fyxen.
 * The feminine of wearg is attested only in grundwyrgen, which is used in Beowulf to describe Grendel's mother.

Adjectives
Comparative and superlative adjectives:

Notes:


 * The eo in geong was likely not a true diphthong but an orthographic convention that stood for u and showed that the consonant was a palatal, since if it had been a true diphthong, the word would have later become yeng instead. The mutated forms showed i instead of y since i apparently was commonly substituted for y after palatal consonants.

Adjectives made with the -en suffix:

Adjectives made with the -ish suffix:

Adjectives made with the -y suffix:

Ablaut derivatives
Many derivatives were gotten from certain inflectional forms of strong verbs (see here for more about ablaut).

Causative verbs gotten from the past indicative singular:

Notes:


 * Some of the causatives had already lost causative force, even by Old English times, e.g., OE faran and fēran meant nearly the same thing, and the latter was not used as the causative of the former, i.e., if it had kept causative force, it would have meant something like carry instead.
 * The consonantal difference seen in pairs such as rise and rear, and OE līþan and NE lead is due to Verner's law.
 * The verb raise, often used instead of rear as the causative equivalent of rise, is a borrowing from Old Norse, but both rear and raise are etymologically the causative of rise.
 * Bend (OE bendan) and singe (OE sengan) may be causatives of bind and sing, respectively, though all causative force is now lost.
 * Cringe seems to be from the unattested Old English verb crengan, the causative of cringan (meaning fall, yield).
 * Clench arose from a variant of the causative of OE clingan (cling).
 * The OE verbs cwincan and līfan (from which quench and leave are gotten) are attested only in the derivatives acwincan and belīfan, both of which had the same meaning as the base verbs.
 * The causatives screncan and swemman are attested only in gescrencan and beswemman.
 * The modern verb dwell was originally the causative of the OE verb dwelan (go astray), which is attested only in the past participle adjective gedwolen (erroneous). Thus, the original meaning of dwell was lead astray, and it later came to mean reside.
 * OE etan (eat) had ettan (graze, pasture) as its causative, but it is not based on the past tense form ǣt (which is unusual for its lengthened vowel). Instead, it is based on an older past tense form that, if it had survived into Old English, would have become æt.
 * OE irnan and rinnan are variants of the same verb, the former being a metathesized form of the latter. In standard speech, the verb later became run, the past tense being ran. The causative too underwent metathesis in Old English, and so there were two causative forms: ærnan (gallop) and rennan (coagulate, attested only in gerennan).
 * OE stencan meaning stink (as it had lost its causative force) is attested only once and is seldom found in Middle English. Since the 16th century, however, stench has been occasionally used to mean cause to stink, and this meaning was likeliest gotten from the noun stench.
 * OE stencan also meant scatter and was the causative of the strong verb stincan meaning spring, leap.
 * The modern form of OE dūfan would be dove (rhyming with shove, OE scūfan).
 * The causatives of OE feallan (fall) and weallan (boil) are fyllan (earlier fiellan, unattested) and wyllan (earlier wiellan, unattested), but they do not quite belong here, as they are based not on the OE past tense forms fēoll and wēoll but on older forms. The OE past tense forms were newly formed and had replaced the older reduplicated forms. The modern verbs fell and well are from the Anglian variants.
 * Though not a strong verb but a preterite-present verb, OE cunnan (meaning know) has a causative gotten from the present tense form cann; the causative was OE cennan, which meant make known. The causative became ken, though with the non-causative meaning of know (which may have been due to Old Norse influence).

Nouns gotten from the past indicative singular:

Notes:


 * Bend has been replaced by band and bond, both of which came from Old Norse, but bend is still used in nautical contexts to refer to a knot with which a rope is tied to another or to something else.