The Universe of Disco

English's -en suffix

In English we can sometimes turn an adjective into a verb by suffixing “-en”. For example:

black → blacken
red → redden
white → whiten
wide → widen

But not

blue → bluen*
green → greenen*
yellow → yellowen*
long → longen*

(Note that I am only looking at -en verbs that are adjective-derived present tenses. This post is not concerned with the many -en verbs that are past participles, such as “smitten” (past participle of “smite”), “spoken” (“speak”), “molten” (“melt”), “sodden” (“seethe”), etc.)

I asked some linguist about this once and they were sure it was purely morphological, something like: black, red, and white end in stop consonants, and blue, green, and yellow don't.

Well, let's see:

There are some fine points:

• “Biggen” used to exist but has fallen out of use
• Perhaps I should have ommitted “strengthen” and “hasten”, which are derived from nouns, not from adjectives
• I'm not sure whether “closen”, “hotten” and “wetten” are good or bad so I left them off
• “moisten” and “soften” might belong with the stops instead of the fricatives
• etc.

but clearly the morphological explanation wins. I'm convinced.

[ Addendum: Wiktionary discusses this suffix, distinguishing it from the etymologically distinct participial “-en”, and says “it is not currently very productive in forming new words, being mostly restricted to monosyllabic bases which end in an obstruent”. ]

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