Having gone to an Ash Wednesday service, I was rather forcibly made aware of the word repent, and that made me wonder: can we ever pent?

Maybe that's what goes on in the penthouse.

If anyone has ever read Lillian Hellman's memoir from which the movie "Julia" was taken, you'll know that probably Italians can "pent". The memoir was called "Pentimento", which is the name for forms which can sometimes be seen under the top layer of a painting. The painter repented - changed his mind.

This is a great question without a great answer.

Some authorities hold that repent derives from the Latin paene or the Greek poenere and has something therefor to do with pain and suffering.

Some hold that it derives from the ME repenten, from the OF repentir, from the Latin pentire, and means to be sorry.

Whatever its etymology, we got a big dose of it in the liturgy for Ash Wednesday tonight!

My OED leads me to suppose that the route from Latin via French is the obvious one, linked clearly to penitent. But funnily enough J, it seems there was a form of word very close to pent that got superceded by penitent:

[a. OF. pénitent (14th c. in Littré), ad. L. pænitent-em, pr. pple. of pænitere (pœn-, pèn-) to repent; this as a learned form, in ecclesiastical use, gradually displaced the popular OF. peneant, -ant, and ME. Penant. In pænitere and its derivatives, the original L. form is held to have been with pæ-, but in med.L. pœ- was usual; in Romanic pe-.] [e.a.]

By the way, I noticed another few little sprigs of interest in looking at the whole collection of words from pent to paint:
Latin used re~ before vowels and red~ before consonants (for the general sense of ‘back’ or ‘again’) – one of the few examples in English of the latter form is the timely conjunction for penitent: redeem.
Pent is also an obsolete or dialect form of ‘paint’, as well as the clutch of meanings to do with pressure and constraint.
Pent is also closely associated with bent, sharing the pressure sense.
Paint is also an archaic nautical back formation, so sailors beware of being asked to paint the anchor! trans. To make fast (an anchor) on a ship with a ‘painter’.

So under pressure of time I shall slope off (he notes for our resident French speakers!) and repent me of my sins of omission (he reflects), leaving you with a reminder of John Keats to explore if the fancy takes you, that almost seems to fit the ecclesiastical mood.

To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,--to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

AHD gives three definitions for the prefix re-: again, anew; backward, back; and used as an intensive.

My uncle, Sam Remington, lived in England where he made a small but very illegal living counterfeiting small coins of the realm. He figured that no one would even notice, so he could pass the small change with impunity. Like his deceased cat, he was in the bad mintin' racket.

But he eventually was caught by a dauntless detective from the Yard, who, when Uncle asked him how he had caught him, sang merrily, "Sam, you made the pence too long."

Sam repence to this day.

Wasn't Sam's bird used to make the shuttlecocks?
This entire thread is (or was) terrific. I often, very often find myself in such a better mood after reading stuff on this board. I don't think any of you need any repentance at all. You all have saved my psyche many times, and I've learned some things too.
I've just got a chance to look in here for the first time today, so forgive me for the following (among other things). Sometimes I've pent up emotions.

Well, our emotions can be all pent up.

There was a Scottish tradesman, a painter called Jock, who was very interested in making a pound where he could, so he often would thin down paint to make it go a wee bit further. As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Presbyterian Church decided to do a big restoration job on the roof of one their biggest churches. Jock put in a bid, and because his price was so competitive, he got the job. And so he set to, with a right good will, erecting the trestles and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with the turpentine. Well, Jock was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly done, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, and the sky opened, and the rain poured down, washing the thin paint from all over the church and knocking Jock fair off the scaffold to land on the lawn, among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint. Jock was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he got on his knees and cried: "Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?" And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke: "Repaint! Repaint and thin no more!"

Daggone, Padre. I do believe that's almost as old as mine. But you tell it better.

Though everyone knows that Presbyterian chruches have slate roofs. Come to think on it, I believe almost every church of that denomination I've ever seen have been stone or brick.

Could it possibly be there's an inverse relationship between the durability of the church building and the congregation's viewpoint on the imminence of the second coming? "Oh, yeah, the second coming's just around the corner, let's spend our money on STONE!!!"