Talk:olden

Tea room discussion

Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

Is this adjective only ever used with plural nouns? And is that the reason for the -en ending? SemperBlotto 08:38, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The OED Online says, "orig[inally] and chiefly in (deprecated template usage) olden days, (deprecated template usage) olden time(s)", but it has a number of quotations with other subjects, including singular ones. And, it doesn't have a single explanation for the (deprecated template usage) -en ending. It says that it might be a reflex of Old English -um (dative plural) — against which is a period when the phrase is attested with normal Middle English -e — or that the (deprecated template usage) -n might be there to conserve the trisyllabic structure by protecting the (deprecated template usage) -e from being dropped. Either way, they say that the word was then "perhaps" generalized to other contexts, and that it the end is now "perhaps" understood as having the same (deprecated template usage) -en as (deprecated template usage) golden, (deprecated template usage) wooden, etc. —Ruakh_TALK 15:21, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

As in “made of old”? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I guess. Now that "golden" no longer means "made of gold", and "wood" can be used exactly like "wooden", I think the suffix has become kind of vague, imprecise, perhaps metaphorical. So a better gloss might be simply "old", or maybe "oldish". :-P   —Ruakh_TALK 00:06, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, not in all cases; cf. silken, leathern, silvern, &c., wherein the -en suffix unambiguously retains its original “made of…” meaning. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:09, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Unless British usage is different from American usage, I think you might falling prey to the "I know it, so everyone does" fallacy. You know that "silken" means "made of silk" because "-en" means "made of"; but since "silk" also means "made of silk" (as in "silk curtains"), with "silken" being a bit more old-fashioned-sounding, "-en" is basically just an old-fashioned redundant suffix on certain adjectives. Given that, it's easy to take "olden" as one of those adjectives, even though etymologically it's not. —Ruakh_TALK 19:58, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, yes, but silken, leathern, and silvern all only mean “made of silk’, leather’, and silver”, respectively. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 20:15, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Funnily enough, my argument was presuming that (when I described -en as redundant), but I've done some b.g.c. searches now, and I have to dispute that. Of the first ten hits at google books:"was silvern" (to bypass all the last-name hits), seven are using it of speech (either speech in general, or a specific person's, most in explicit reference to an old proverb that speech is silvern but silence is golden), one of a tariff, one of "the world", and one to mean "made of silver". Of the next ten, a greater proportion are literal, but still only half and half. It's possible that in attributive use (which my search would miss) it primarily means "made of silver", but it certainly doesn't only mean that. Likewise, the hits at google books:"was leathern" seem mostly to mean "leathery" or "reminiscent of leather", rather than literally "made of leather", and the hits at google books:"was silken" use it to describe hair, people, and non-silk clothes. "silken smooth" seems to mean "smooth as silk"; and one thesaurus called The Synonym Finder gives "silken" alongside "satiny" as a (near-)synonym for "slick". —Ruakh_TALK 03:08, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Heh. I stand corrected. And, thinking about it, ashen, brazen, and leaden refute me further. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:27, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

• Interesting stuff. To answer SB's question, it is sometimes used with non-plural forms. "In (the) olden time" was formerly reasonably common. Ƿidsiþ 17:23, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Tidbit

The trivia tidbit that is missing here is that 'old' in ME was also noun meaning old folks the olden or ancient times — likely a carryover from OE on ealdum dagum.

• Send æfter þine wiue & æfter þine children, þan ᵹungen & þan olden.

It was also a plural adjectiv. Why does this plural form still stand when ouren (our) and eyen (eyes) fell out? (But oxen stayed.) It may be owing to it was both a plural noun and a plural adjectiv form ... or it just may be that folks like it! --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 22:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

It wasn't a noun in Middle English, it was a nominalized adjective. Just as "the old" isn't really a noun, just an adjective doing noun duty. The difference is clear from grammar: A nominalized adjective inflects like a normal adjective both in Middle and Modern English. Sorry for being a smartarse, but I've always felt strongly about this :) --- Now, when it comes to the survival of irregular forms, there are several factors at play including frequency, semantic field, and phonetics. I think the last may be relevant in the case of "olden". It's probably not accidental that the two words with which "olden" has always been mainly combined, "day" and "time", both start with an alveolar plosive. "Olden days" and "olden times" avoid the awkward gemination in "old days", "old times". Of course, one may ask: If that mattered here, why didn't it matter otherwise? But that's just how it goes. The point is that for a while you had the choice to say "in the old days" or "in the olden days", just as you had the choice to say "in the old houses" or "in the olden houses". Generally the language went with the short forms, but "olden days", "olden times" became fossiled expressions, and their phonetic advantage probably assisted this process. 90.186.72.227 04:27, 22 June 2023 (UTC)