a verbal formative, used to english L. verbs of the first conjugation, and to form Eng. verbs on other L. words or elements. This use originated in the formation of verbs from the participial adjs. in -ate mentioned under -ATE2.
1. In OE., verbs had been regularly formed on adjectives, as hwít hwítian, wearm wearmian, bysiʓ bysʓian, drýʓe drýʓan, etc. With the loss of the inflexions, these verbs became, by the 15th c., identical in form with the adjs., e.g., to white, warm, busy, dry, empty, dirty, etc.
2. In Latin, vbs. were also freely formed on adjectives, as siccus siccāre, clārus clārāre, līber līberāre, sacer sacrāre. This prevailed still more extensively in Fr., e.g., see sècher, clair clairer, content contenter, confus confuser, etc. Thence also Eng. received many verbs, which by the 15th c. were identical in form with their adjectives, e.g., to clear, humble, manifest, confuse, etc.
3. On these analogies Eng. adjectives formed from L. pa. pples. began generally, in the 16th c., to yield verbs of identical form, e.g., adj. direct, vb. to direct; adj. separate, vb. to separate; adj. aggravate, vb. to aggravate: precisely analogous to adj. busy, vb. to busy; adj. content, vb. to content.
4. These verbs, though formed immediately from participial adjectives already in English, answered in form to the pa. pples. of L. verbs of the same meaning. It was thus natural to associate them directly with these L. verbs, and to view them as their regular Eng. representatives.
5. This once done, it became the recognized method of englishing a Latin verb, to take the ppl. stem of the L. as the present stem of the Eng.; so that Eng. verbs were now formed on L. pa. pples. by mere analogy, and without the intervention of a participial adjective. In accordance with this, fascinate, concatenate, asseverate, venerate, and hundreds of others, have been formed directly on the participial stems of L. fascināre, concatēnāre, assevērāre, venerāri, etc., without having been preceded by a cognate adjective. In the case of many words introduced in the 16th c., evidence is wanting to show whether the vb. was preceded by, or contemporaneous with, the ppl. adj. in -ate.
6. These Eng. vbs. in -ate correspond generally to Fr. vbs. in -er (:—L. -āre), as Eng. separate, create, F. séparer, créer: this in its turn gave an analogy for the formation of Eng. verbs from French; as F. isoler (ad. It. isolare:—L. insulāre), Eng. isolate; F. féliciter, Eng. felicitate.
7. Latin vbs. in -āre might, analogically, have been formed on many words, on which they were not actually formed; wherever such a vb. might have existed, a F. vb. in -er, and an Eng. vb. in -ate, are liable to be formed. Thus nōbilitas gave in L. nōbilitāre, the Eng. representative of which is nobilitate; fēlīcitas, which might have given fēlīcitāre, has given F. féliciter and Eng. felicitate; and capācitas, which might have given L. capācitāre and F. capaciter, has actually given Eng. capacitate. Hence numerous modern verbs, as differentiate, substantiate, vaccinate; including many formed on modern or foreign words, as adipocerate, assassinate, camphorate, methylate.
(It is possible that the analogy of native verbs in -t, with the pa. pple. identical in form with the infinitive, as set, hit, put, cut, contributed also to the establishment of verbs like direct, separat(e, identical with their pa. pples.)
