The meat is DONE, i. e., it is sufficiently cooked. I am DONE up, i. e., my strength is at an end. He is DONE for, i. e., his life or his fortune is finished. In the participle present it has likewise some peculiar meanings: He is DOING well, signifies, either that he is prospering in fortune, or recovering from sickness-he is DOING ill, means the reverse of these. That will do, signifies it is enough. I am undone, means I am ruined; but to undo is to unfasten. Do, compounded with the prepositions on and off, forms two regular verbs, namely, to don, i. e., to do on or d'on a vestment, and its opposite, to doff, i. e., do off or d'off. The irregular verbs are numerous, and though they might be to a certain degree classified, an alphabetical order is more convenient, and it is therefore adopted. * Perhaps more properly besoughten; the termination in en appearing to be proper to those verbs whose past ends in ought, as fought, foughten. Indeed, more than two-thirds of the irregular verbs have still this termination in the participle, and probably in many more it has been dropped merely from the English habit of contracting words in speaking them. + As "Let us give as we are most bounden, continual thanks," &c.-Liturgy. * Verbs which have the præter and present alike in the first person, nevertheless make edst in the second person singular, as I cast, thou castedst. + Lowth gives clang as the præter, and from analogy at any rate it ought to be so. Crope is become obsolete. * "As in this glorious and well foughten field." A vessel of our country richly fraught.”—Shakspeare. |