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This isn't the same as the unviolent "work", or if it is it's back in prehistory.Pokorny list two different roots: first, * werg'-, (* wreg'- 'to work, to do, maske'; * werg'om, p.1168), whence English work, Greek (w)ergon. And second, * wreg- (* werg- 'to hit, strike, press, urge, thump, propel, impel', p.1181), whence Latin urgeo, English wreck, wreak, and irk (from Old Norse). Calvert Watkins, in the A-H IE roots appendix, suggests they are the same root, and that the second one is really a zero-grade of the first. http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE577.html
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Joined: Jan 2004
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Is work a weak verb?
Yes, it is. It was in Old English because its past tense was formed not by ablaut (vowel gradation, e.g., sing ~ sang) but by a dental suffix (today's -ed).
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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well there is still the idiom 'over wrought' for someone who gets 'worked up' over a small slight, or set back. and 'hard wrought victory' (aside from the well known wrought iron)
wrought is not completely 'dead'--unlike a telegragh-. no one sends a telegraph, and idioms using the word are growing uncommon, even AT&T is now AT&T (not just shorthand for American Telephone and Telegraph) telegraph is a word in its death thoughs.. maybe it will live on in a single idiom, or maybe it will die out, and our grandchilden will think themselves clever to know the word.
(remember the time before universal direct dialing? when you 'placed' an overseas call (with the help of an operator, and sometimes on a schedule convienent for the telephone company? and you could make person to person or station to station calls.?)
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and 'hard wrought victory'
Isn't that hard-fought victory? Google shows 13.3K ghits for the latter versus 1 ghit for the former.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I see lots of strange things in the papers; sometimes I think I am cursed with an eye that finds mistakes just so I can be aggravated. I hate it when I find an error in a book because I keep going back to it with my eye while I am on that page and with my mind after I turn the page. Example: in Leon Uris' latest novel he has a character making a reference to West Virginia in 1861. ARGH!!!
Anyway, I have seen wrought iron referred to many times in the paper as either rot iron or rod iron. Double ARGH!
TEd
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sometimes I think I am cursed with an eye that finds mistakes just so I can be aggravated.Careful, TEd, it's a slippery slope from that position to one where the mistakes are purposeful and fraught with meaning. Messages from those in control.  , nudge.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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If you burn your sirloin, is that a misteak?
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'm still disappointed at learning that "wrought" isn't the past tense of "wring" (like brought/bring). Phooey! I liked my way better.
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Phooey! I liked my way better.
You could just tell people it is. Who would know the difference, or care?
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