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Theme week! Yes, again already -- because this week's theme is frequentives, verbal forms that denote repeated (or sometimes continuous) action. English no longer has productive frequentive forms (languages that do include Finnish, Russian, and Turkish), which means we now think of the few frequentive verbs we do have as separate words from their stem. Such as this one:
sniffle (SNIF-uhl) - v., to sniff repeatedly.
As a noun form, the act of sniffling and (in the plural) the sniffles is a light head cold (or possibly allergies). English has, or I should say had, two frequentive suffixes, of which -le has left the more common remains. This one can be dated to around 1620, from sniff (from Middle English, either imitative or from snivel, of Scandinavian origin, dictionaries disagree) + frequentive -le.
---L.
sniffle (SNIF-uhl) - v., to sniff repeatedly.
As a noun form, the act of sniffling and (in the plural) the sniffles is a light head cold (or possibly allergies). English has, or I should say had, two frequentive suffixes, of which -le has left the more common remains. This one can be dated to around 1620, from sniff (from Middle English, either imitative or from snivel, of Scandinavian origin, dictionaries disagree) + frequentive -le.
---L.
