Speaken

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An archaic form of the verb meaning to utter words aloud or to talk with others
2. Old-fashioned variant of the verb for voicing words, used to express talking or communicating by voice
3. Archaic verb form meaning to express thoughts in spoken words or to converse with someone

Etymology: "Speaken" is an archaic English verb form, a variant of "speak" that carried the same meaning. Its ending is the Middle English infinitive or plural suffix "-en", which came into English from Old English verb endings and was used widely in the 1300s and 1400s, as in Chaucer's period. Writers then often added this ending to verbs to mark the infinitive or plural, so "speaken" sat alongside "speak" in the same texts. The base word "speak" descends from Old English "sprecan", which shares roots with Old High German "sprehhan" and related Germanic verbs. Over the Middle English period the initial "sp" stayed fixed while the vowel and ending shifted, and the "-en" form gradually fell out of use, leaving "speak" as the standard form by the 1500s. Shakespeare and his contemporaries still used "speak" in its modern shape, so "speaken" survives today mainly in historical and poetic contexts.