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It's time once again for a theme week of frequentives. Though I'm sorry to say it's probably the last one, as I'm running out of interesting ones -- English doesn't have all that many, all of them survivors from when the language could create them on the fly. So let's get started:
swaddle (SWOD-l) - v., to bind (an infant) with long narrow strips of cloth to prevent free movement; to wrap tightly with clothes or bandages.
And as a noun, the cloth used to swaddle. This is an old practice, not much used any more, and the word is similarly old. In Middle English it was both swadelen and swathelen, from Old English spelled variously as swaþuln/swæþelnn/sweþeln/sweoþoln, frequentive of swathian, to swathe, to wrap with fabric -- so frequentive form as a sort of intensifier.
---L.
swaddle (SWOD-l) - v., to bind (an infant) with long narrow strips of cloth to prevent free movement; to wrap tightly with clothes or bandages.
And as a noun, the cloth used to swaddle. This is an old practice, not much used any more, and the word is similarly old. In Middle English it was both swadelen and swathelen, from Old English spelled variously as swaþuln/swæþelnn/sweþeln/sweoþoln, frequentive of swathian, to swathe, to wrap with fabric -- so frequentive form as a sort of intensifier.
---L.
