handle

As you know, Bob, we frequently run theme weeks of frequentives -- verbs inflected to indicate repeated or continuous action. Not that modern English has a way of generating frequentives, but Middle and Old English did, and some of those forms have descended to us as separate verbs, with no sense of their relationship to their stem -- though helpfully, all of them end in either -er or -le. Here's our third such theme week, starting with:


handle (HAN-dl) - v., to touch, pick up, carry, or feel with the hand or hands, to take hold of; to manage, control, direct, or deal with.


Plus several extended and specialized senses, and several extended and specialized noun senses. This one dates back to Old English form handlian, to handle, itself from a Proto-Germanic form *handulōną, to take/grip/feel, frequentive of *handuz, the ancestor of hand. (So, yes, the ancestors of Old English also had frequentives.)

---L.