Also 6 agment. [a. F. augment (14th c.), ad. L. augmentum increase, f. augēre to increase: see -MENT.]
† 1. Increase, extension, augmentation. Obs.
1430. Lydg., Chron. Troy, I. v. In augment of thy wo.
1501. Douglas, Pal. Hon., Prol. I. x. In the is rute and agment of curage.
1599. Thynne, Animadv., 71. To seeke the augmente and correctione of Chawcers Woorkes.
1677. Plot, Oxfordsh., 132. That though indeed there be an augment in some petrifications, yet that it is not so in all.
1696. Phillips, Augment … an encreasing.
2. Gram. The prefixed vowel (in Sanskrit ă, in Greek ε) which characterizes the past tenses of the verb in the older Aryan languages. (Sometimes applied to any prefix supposed to be of analogous past participles in German.)
(In Greek, when the ε remains separate, it is called the syllabic augment; when it forms, with a following vowel, a long vowel or diphthong, the temporal augment.) Hence Augmentless a., wanting the verbal augment.
a. 1771. Gray, in Corr. (1843), 226. The y which we often see prefixed to participles passive, ycleped, yhewe, etc. … is the old Anglo-Saxon augment.
1861. Jelf, Grk. Gram., I. § 171. The augment is employed in the indicative mood only of all the historic tenses.
1879. Whitney, Skr. Gram., § 585. The augment is a short a, prefixed to a tense stem…. The augment is a sign of past time. Ibid., § 587. The accentuation of the augmentless forms.
