im._, iii, 15.
"Thou _oughtest_ therefore to _have put_ my money to the
exchangers."--_Matt._, xxiv, 27. We never say, or have said, "He, she, or
it, _oughts_ or _oughteth_." Yet we manifestly use this verb in the present
tense, and in the third person singular; as, "Discourse _ought always to
begin_ with a clear proposition."--_Blair's Rhet._, p. 217. I have already
observed that some grammarians improperly call _ought_ an auxiliary. The
learned authors of Brightland's Grammar, (which is dedicated to Queen
Anne,) did so; and also affirmed that _must_ and _ought_ "have only the
_present time_," and are alike _invariable_. "It is _now_ quite obsolete to
say, _thou oughtest_; for _ought_ now changes its ending no more than
_must_."--_Brightland's Gram._, (approved by _Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq._,) p.
112.

"_Do, will_, and _shall, must_, OUGHT, and _may_,
_Have, am_, or _be_, this Doctrine will display."--_Ib._, p. 107.

OBS. 5.--_Wis_, preterit _wist_, to know, to think, to suppose, to imagine,
appears to be now nearly or quite obsolete; but it may be proper to explain
it, because it is found in the Bible: as, "I _wist_ not, brethren, that he
was the high priest."--_Acts_, xxiii, 5. "He himself '_wist_ not that his
face shone.'"--_Life of Schiller_, p. iv. _Wit_, to know, and _wot_, knew,
are also obsolete, except in the phrase _to wit_; which, being taken
abstractly, is equivalent to the adverb _namely_, or to the phrase, _that
is to say_. The phrase, "_we do you to wit_," (in 2 Cor., viii, 1st,)
means, "we _inform_ you." Churchill gives the present tense of this verb
three forms, _weet, wit_, and _wot_; and there seems to have been some
authority for them all: as, "He was, _to weet_, a little roguish
page."--_Thomson_. "But little _wotteth_ he the might of the means his
folly despiseth."--_Tupper's Book of Thoughts_, p. 35. _To wit_, used
alone, to indicate a thing spoken of, (as the French use their infinitive,
_savoir, a savoir_, or the phrase, _c'est a savoir_,) is undoubtedly an
elliptical expression: probably for, "_I give you to wit_;" i. e., "I give
you _to know_." _Trow_, to think, occurs in the Bible; as, "I _trow_
not."--_N. Test_. And Coar gives it as a defective verb; and only in the
first person singular of the present indicative, "_I trow_." Webster and
Worcester mark the words as obsolete; but Sir W. Scott, in the Lady of the
Lake, has this line:

"Thinkst thou _he trow'd_ thine omen ought?"--_C