weak verb

Noun

weak verb (plural weak verbs)

1. One of a class of verbs which use a dental suffix appended to the stem to indicate the past tense.
   • A Weak Verb adds d, ed, or t, to the Present Tense, to make the Past Tense; as, invite, invited; betray, betrayed; step, stept.1866, William Francis Collier, A Grammar of the English Language, with a Sketch of its History, etc., Edinburgh: Thomas Laurie, →OCLC, page 36
   1. (by narrowing) A regular verb of this class (thus excluding verbs that do have a dental suffix, but show some formal peculiarity, as in tell > told).
      • Storage clearly is assumed for irregular verb forms. But what about regular or weak verb forms?1998, Katrin Linder, “Overgeneralization revisited: the case of German past participles”, in Ray Fabri, Albert Ortmann, Teresa Parodi, editors, Models of inflection, Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, page 161
2. A member of a verb class that is customarily called “weak”, and usually distinguished from another class called “strong”.
   1. A verb formed from a root that includes a semivowel or another consonant prone to elision (so-called “weak roots”).
      • Three basic root consonant classes exist: the strong verb, roots with weak initial root consonant (I-weak verbs), roots with weak final consonants (III-weak verbs), and a composite class...2009, Charles Häberl, The Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, →ISBN, page 177