Lefte

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An old spelling of the past tense of leave, meaning departed from a place or abandoned someone or something
2. Archaic form of the past tense and past participle of leave, used in older English for having gone away or been forsaken
3. Obsolete past form of the verb leave, showing that someone went away from, or deserted, a person or place

Etymology: "Lefte" is the simple past and past participle of "leave", so the story belongs to the verb itself. The verb descends from Old English "lǣfan", meaning "to leave", which was a causative formed from "lībaną", "to stay or remain". In other words, leaving was originally conceived as causing something to stay behind. That sense survives in the older idea of leaving food uneaten, a usage that Old Norse "leifa" and its modern descendants in Icelandic and Swedish still preserve. Middle English kept the verb as "leven", and the spelling "lefte" for the past tense appears as the sound and spelling of the verb shifted over the centuries. The word is a native English form rather than a loan, so it has been part of the language from the beginning rather than arriving through French or Latin.