schonten

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schonten

1. inflection of schonen:
   1. first/third-person plural preterite
   2. first/third-person plural subjunctive II

• schonte, schount, schunt, shontt, shunt

Unclear; multiple possibilities exist:

• From unrecorded Old English *sċunettan, a derivative of sċunian (“to avoid, fear”); thus, by surface analysis, schonen (“to avoid, fear”) +‎ -ten (frequentative suffix).
• A back-formation from the past forms of schonen, with (West Midland) dialectal final devoicing.
• An alteration of *schunden, *schynden, from Old English sċyndan, sċendan (“to hasten, hurry”) (as in āsċyndan (“to remove, take away”), from Proto-West Germanic *skundijan, from Proto-Germanic *skundijaną (“to compel, drive, push; to accelerate, rush, speed up”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃuntən/

schonten (third-person singular simple present schonteth, present participle schontende, schontynge, first-/third-person singular past indicative and past participle schonted)

1. (poetic, especially Late Middle English) To dodge, evade, or escape; to suddenly avoid.
2. (poetic, especially Late Middle English) To start, swerve, or jerk; to suddenly move.

• English: shunt (see there for further descendants)

• “shunten, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.