weak verb

plural weak verbs

1. grammarOne 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 narrowinggrammarA 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. grammarA member of a verb class that is customarily called “weak”, and usually distinguished from another class called “strong”.
   1. grammarA 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