Yfallen

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An archaic past participle of fall, describing something that has dropped, collapsed or descended from a higher place
2. Used in older poetic English to mean having tumbled down, sunk or come down from an elevated position
3. Archaic form meaning that something has dropped, toppled or been brought low, as past participles of fall once did

Etymology: The "y-" in "yfallen" is a fossil of the Old English prefix "ge-", which was attached to many past participles. Old English had "gefeallen," the participle of "feallan," meaning "to fall." Over the Middle English period the prefix wore down to "y-" (also written "i-"), while the rest of the word stayed put. Speakers had dropped the prefix from ordinary speech by the time modern English took shape, so the form survived mainly in poetry and older writing. Readers who meet it now hear an old-fashioned flavour, and writers who want that effect still reach for it. The verb itself has the same ancestry as German "fallen" and Dutch "vallen," which shows how far back its roots reach in the Germanic languages.