-t
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: 5.43 in modern English
1
Scrabble Score
1
Letters
2
Syllables
1
Unique Chars
Meaning
suffix
Used to form the past tense and/or past participle of some verbs.
suffix
An excrescent ending appended to words suffixed with -s.
suffix
Used to form verbs from nouns or adjectives (compare -ate, -ize), frequently having a causative force, or modified from an existing verb into a frequentative verb.
suffix
Added to the end of words ending in ⟨d⟩, representing an AAVE pronunciation as /t/ rather than /d/, now generally with intensifying force.
Slang
Example Sentences
Etymology
From Middle English -te (past tense ending), -t (past participle ending), from Old English -te, -de (first and third person past tense ending), -t, -ed, -od (past participle ending), from Proto-Germanic *-id- (past tense stem ending of class 1 weak verbs) and *-idaz (past participle ending of class 1 weak verbs). In some verbs, like lose/lost, the ‐t‐/‐t arose during the Middle English period from the devoicing of the earlier ‐d‐/‐d. This devoicing typically occurred after the suffix was syncopated from ‐ede and ‐ed, forcing the voiced alveolar stop directly against the stem’s final consonant. See -ed (etymologies 1 and 2). Furthermore, in forms such as spelt and burnt, the participial -t is a later development during the Early Modern English period.