Talk:abide

Past tense

I have seen abide given as an example of a verb that has no past tense in recent Modern English, or is at least in the process of losing its past tense. That is to say that although dictionaries usually list two past tense forms, 1) the frequency of both forms put together is far less than would be expected based on the frequency of the present tense forms, and 2) most native speakers do not accept either form as grammatical. I will try to find a reference for these claims. Perhaps a footnote to the table is appropriate. Does anyone know of other such verbs? CyborgTosser 18:46, 1 January 2006 (UTC) But, there is the instance of the hyper-transitive verb compounding the act of nomenclature. Past or presesnt tense can be confused in the context of this nomenclature depending, of courses, on grammatical use.