For over 600 years everything with words weigh And weight neat and clean. The first is the verb, and the second is the related noun: you weigh something to get its weight.* This is largely still true.
But then in the middle of the 17th century weight begins to wade into verb territory, carrying a specific meaning: “to oppress with a burden.”
Not that it is a burden for lexicographers. (We see this kind of behavior all the time.)
This meaning of the verb weight remains one of its dominant meanings, found in phrases like “heavy with anxiety.” A less dramatic meaning was later developed: “to load or make as heavy as or as if there were weight”, as in “a cool room where sheets of paper must be weighed down to keep them not blown away” or “a weighted blanket is supposed to help you relax.”
From the meaning of “oppress” and “aggravation”, verb weight continued to develop other common uses in more technical contexts of the language, not all of them pleasant. For example, a substance that is weighted with the help of an inferior ingredient is said to have a weight. But a thicker camera lens also has weight. In statistics, items in a frequency distribution are weighted when the relative frequency or importance of items is considered part of their value. In weighted classes, specific types of assignments are given more importance than others. And in the extension of those meanings, something that is aligned, skewed, or tilted in a particular direction by manipulation is also said to be weighted, as in “a weighted system in favor of grammar enthusiasts.” And in a semantic behavior that can only be described as unpleasantly typical in English, weight Historically also used as a synonym of weigh. We’re pleased to report that this use is rare—at least in the edited, published text.
For the most part, we can keep weigh And weight straight using weigh as a verb and weight as a noun, with some minor exceptions to stats and points and blankets. Our advice: take it easy when you can.
* Except that everything is neat and clean, which is of course not true: as the Oxford English Dictionary reports, weigh from the beginning there were additional, now obsolete meanings, i.e. bring and carry and keep; These meanings eventually led to the maritime meanings related to a ship’s anchorage found in this dictionary. Main meaning of weigh And weight however, from the very beginning acted as complementary forms.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
