any time-taking thing, is taken as a thing, and its name is a Thing-name, as to write.
As in Greek the Infinitive mood, tò gráphein, the ‘to write’; and in Italian, il scrivere, the ‘to write’ (the deed of writing or a writing), so the Infinitive mood-shape of the Saxon time-word was taken as a thing-name after the preposition to, to or for, as to huntianne (to or for the deed to hunt or hunting), as ‘Why does Alfred keep those dogs?’ ‘To huntianne.’
Thence we have our wording —
‘Any chairs to mend?’ (any chairs to or for the deed mending),
‘A house to let,’
‘Letters to write,’
‘A tale to tell,’
which is all good English.
It is an evil to our speech that the thing-shape now ending in -ing should be mistaken for the mark-word ending in -ing.
Unhappily two sundry endings of the old English have worn into one shape. They were -ung or -ing and -end.
Singung is the deed of singing, a thing. Singend is a mark-word, as in the wording ‘I have a singing bird.’
Sailing and hunting, in the foregiven thought-wordings, are thing-names, and not mark-words. Sailing is segling, as ‘ne mid seglinge ne mid rownesse’ (neither with sailing nor rowing). – Bede 5, 1.
‘Wunigende ofer hyne’ (woning [mark-word] over him). – Matt iii. 16.
‘Sy wunung heora on west’ (be their woning [thing-name] waste). – Ps. lxviii 30.
‘Ða genealaehton hym to Farisaer hyne costigende’ (then came near to him the Pharisees tempting [mark-word] him). – Matt xix. 3.
‘Ne gelaede þu us on costnunge’ (lead us not into tempting [thing-name]). – Lord’s Prayer.
So ‘haelende,’ Matt v. 23; ‘haeling’; ‘bodigende,’ Matt. x. 35; ‘bodung,’ Luke xi. 32.
‘Waere þu to-daeg, on huntunge?’ (not huntende) (wert thou to-day on or in hunting?) – Aelfric’s Dialogue.
‘Hwaet dest þu be þinre huntunge?’ (not huntende) (what dost thou by thy hunting?) – Aelfric.
‘The CALLING of assemblies I cannot away with.’ – Isa. i. 13. Not ‘calling assemblies,’ which, if calling were a mark-word, would mean assemblies that call.
The right speech-trimming with the thing-names in -ing is to trim them in the old English way as thing-names in their cases; as,
‘We are the offscouring of all things unto this day.’ – 1 Cor. iv. 13. Not ‘We are the offscouring all things.’
‘For that righteous man, IN seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul.’
‘By the WASHING of regeneration and (the) RENEWING of the Holy Ghost.’ – Titus iii. 5. Not ‘He saved us by the washing regeneration and renewing the Holy Ghost.’
The ending -er of the time-taker (deeder, name-word) is, not unclearly, the Celtic, Welsh gwr, or in word-welding -wr, the Latin -or; as,
Welsh, barn, doom; barnwr, a doom-man.
Latin, canto, to sing; cantor, a sing-man.
Thence -er seems a far less fitting ending for a tool-name than the old Saxon -el; and a tool for the whetting of knives would be more fitly called a whettel than a whetter. Choppel, chopper; clippels, clippers.
All new time-words now taken or shapen from other tongues must be unmoulded.
We say shoot, shot (not shooted); but loot, looted (not lot), loot being the Hindustani lootna, to rob or plunder.
So time-words, which are known English words, of another kind, names or mark-words, are mostly unmoulded.
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