sterten

Middle English

Alternative forms

  • sturten, styrtan, stirten, steorten, starten

Etymology

From Old English styrtan, from Proto-West Germanic *sturtijan (“to startle, move, set in motion”).

Verb

sterten

  1. to leap
    • c. 1250, Anonymous, "Cuckoo Song" (as printed in Oxford Book of English Verse, 1900):
      Bulluc sterteth
      Bullock starts
  2. to start
  3. to begin

Conjugation

Conjugation of sterten (weak in -te)
infinitive (to) sterten, sterte
present tense past tense
1st-person singular sterte sterte
2nd-person singular stertest stertest
3rd-person singular sterteth sterte
subjunctive singular sterte
imperative singular —
plural1 sterten, sterte sterten, sterte
imperative plural sterteth, sterte —
participles stertynge, stertende stert, ystert

1 Sometimes used as a formal 2nd-person singular.

Descendants

  • English: start, sturt (dialectal)
  • Scots: stert, start
  • Yola: starth

References

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.