Sweep Swept.
Weep Wept.
Lose Lost.
Mean [57]Meant.

Here the final consonant is -t.

_Present_ _Praeterite_

Flee Fled.
Hear [58]Heard.
Shoe Shod.
Say [59]Said.

Here the final consonant is -d.

s. 308. III. In the second class the vowel of the present tense was
_shortened_ in the praeterite. In the third class it is _changed_.

Tell, told.
Will, would.
Sell, sold.
Shall, should.

To this class belong the remarkable praeterites of the verbs _seek_,
_beseech_, _catch_, _teach_, _bring_, _think_, and _buy_, viz., _sought_,
_besought_, _caught_, _taught_, _brought_, _thought_, and _bought_. In all
these, the final consonant is either g or k, or else a sound allied to
those mutes. When the tendency of these sounds to become h and y, as well
as to undergo farther changes, is remembered, the forms in point cease to
seem anomalous. In _wrought_, from _work_, there is a transposition. In
_laid_ and _said_ the present forms make a show of regularity which they
have not. The true original forms should be _legde_ and _saegde_, the
infinitives being _lecgan_, _secgan_. In these words the i represents the
semivowel y, into which the original g was changed. The Anglo-Saxon forms
of the other words are as follows:--

Bycan, b['o]hte.
S[^e]can, s['o]hte.
Bringan, br['o]hte.
Thencan, th['o]hte.
Wyrcan, w['o]rhte.

s. 309. Out of the three classes into which the weak verbs in Anglo-Saxon
are divided, only one takes a vowel before the d or t. The other two add
the syllables -te or -de, to the last letter of the original word. The
vowel that, in one out of the three Anglo-Saxon classes, precedes d is o.
Thus we have _lufian_, _lufode_; _clypian_, _clypode_. In the other two
classes the forms are respectively _baernan_, _baernde_; and _tellan_,
_tealde_, no vowel being found. The _participle_, however, as stated above,
ended, not in -de or -te, but in -d or -t; and in two out of the three
classes it was preceded by a vowel; the vowel being e,--_gelufod_,
_baerned_, _geteald_. Now in those conjugations where no vowel preceded the
d of the praeterite, and where the original word ended in -d or -t, a
difficulty, which has already been indicated, arose. To add the sign of the
praeterite to a word like _eard-ian_ (_to dwell_) was an easy matter,