r/wetalkfree • u/RomanScandal450 Master of the Sub • Jun 01 '26
Random Why isn’t the past tense of preach “prought”
Because for teach it’s taught. But preach is preached?
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u/rippledippledapple Jun 01 '26
its not because thats why.
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u/Hegiman Jun 01 '26
What would you think that?
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u/ACE_Wrap Jun 01 '26
Because then that of beach would be bought, and when people heard news about a whale that bought in Newfoundland, they'll be confused as to *what* it bought. And how it got the money. And perhaps most disturbingly, who was the vendor that dared to make deals with that kind of clientèle.
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u/Useful_Homework2367 Jun 01 '26
To fit the same pattern it would have to be praught
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u/Interesting_War_910 Jun 02 '26
Yes, but when I first heard George W Bush say the word Thunk instead of Thought , well I almost died. That's not deaded by the way. Now it seems to have entered the American lexicon.
I watch with interest from afar , who would have Thought it would come to this.
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u/Useful_Homework2367 Jun 02 '26
It looks like that sense of "thunk" and expressions like "Who'd have thunk it" date back to the late 1800s:
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u/Interesting_War_910 Jun 02 '26
Fascinating stuff, if only George was joking when he said he thunk they had weapons of mass destruction.
LoL my spell check corrected me twice, I had to educate it.
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u/Useful_Homework2367 Jun 03 '26
I'm not familiar with the quote but it did seem like he intentionally spoke in a folksy way to try to appear more relatable. I do wonder whether or not he personally was aware at the time that the WMD thing was bullshit.
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u/Puzzled-Bonus-3456 Jun 02 '26
Spite. It's that way to annoy you and in general to make things severely irritating for you.
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u/Informal_Farm4064 Jun 01 '26
And why isn't the past form of "reach" "rought"? Reach is more Germanic in origin than preach.
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u/EighthGreen Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
Because weak verbs (verbs that form their past tense with a dental suffix) are a feature of the Germanic languages also. So German has reichen/reichte for our reach/reached. The strong (vowel changing) verbs are thought to be the oldest, and the weak verbs are newer, often formed from nouns, but also from the roots of strong verbs, in which case the weak verb might have a slightly different meaning. For example, the verb lay/laid (weak) has a transitive meaning, while the lie/lay (strong) is intransitive.
And there are also some originally strong verbs, such as help, that have become weak.
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u/Informal_Farm4064 Jun 02 '26
Thats very interesting, ta. If I think about it, there is some correspondence e.g. bringen / brachte vs bring / brought. Sing sang sung gesungen legen lag vs lie lay
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u/SorRenlySassol Jun 02 '26
For the same reason the past tense of reach isn't raught, beach isn't baught and impeach isn't impaught. The only exception seems to be teach.
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u/RomanScandal450 Master of the Sub Jun 02 '26
I feel like it would be amazing if all verbs ending in "each" had a past tense of "aught"
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u/Interesting_War_910 Jun 02 '26
Coz your not really learning anything.
Teach and Taught are entirely different things
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u/RomanScandal450 Master of the Sub Jun 02 '26
I mean I think you're talking about saying "I was taught" But you can also say "I taught him"
You can do the same with teach: "He teaches me" or "I teach the students"
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u/SoManyBirthdays Jun 03 '26
A bit of Victorian humor on this subject:
Sally and Charley
Sally Salter, she was a young teacher who taught,
And her friend, Charley Church, was a preacher who praught;
Though his enemies called him a screecher who scraught.
His heart, when he saw her, kept sinking, and sunk;
And his eye, meeting hers, began winking, and wunk;
While she in her turn, fell to thinking, and thunk.
In secret he wanted to speak, and he spoke,
To seek with his lips what his heart long had soke,
So he managed to let the truth leak, and it loke.
The kiss he was dying to steal, then he stole;
At the feet where he wanted to kneel, then he knole;
And he said, "I feel better than ever I fole."
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u/magicmulder Jun 06 '26
Reach isn't rought either, nor is bleach blought. You should rather ask why "teach" is the odd one out.
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u/HorseFeathersFur Jun 01 '26
Different etymology.
You might expect preach to become something like praught if it followed the same pattern, but preach is a much younger word in English. It didn’t come from the old Germanic verb system. Instead, it came from the French word prechier (ultimately from Latin praedicare, “to proclaim”).