This post will thench you

The other day I was looking at the etymology of drink when I was reminded that the Proto-Germanic language, an ancestor of English, had a morphological causative. Quick explanation for non-linguists: a causative construction is one that means "cause to do something" or "make do something". Usually in English, we just express it like that—"make X" or "cause to X". Sometimes we have entirely separate words, like kill means "cause to die". But other languages have a morphological causative, meaning they get that causative meaning across by adding something to a verb or changing the verb slightly.

Why is this at all interesting? Well, modern English doesn't have a morphological causative. But it has kept at least one set of distinct descendants from both a Proto-Germanic verb and its causative form: drink and drench. That is, drench originally meant "cause someone to drink". Isn't that cool? I think that's cool.

But the part I like best is that, because sound changes are regular, there isn't really any reason why you shouldn't see the same pattern with other verbs that rhyme with drink, as long as they come from verbs that existed when this process worked.

Let's take sink. Making an analogy with drink ~ drench, we get sench, "cause to sink". I was happy to see that this one actually existed (Thanks Wiktionary!). Why not use it the next time you play Battleship? Notice how English got rid of a perfectly good word and made sink serve double duty.

Next! How about stink? Applying the pattern, we get stench. Interestingly, this one already exists as a noun, but why should we let that stop us? I guess this could be useful, maybe when talking about skunks.

Thench is (or would be) a great word, even though think has a complicated word history that means it never could have existed. You could use it for a non-particular kind of thinking, with the same meaning as "be thought provoking", or for a particular thought, like X thenched me that...

And shrink gives us shrench! Wouldn't shrench be the best? Shrink is like sink in that it plays double duty, meaning "become smaller" and "cause to become smaller". A clothes dryer shrenches things. So does a wizard.

There are only a few more to consider. Slink ~ slench and wink ~ wench sound cool, but I can't really think of any contexts to use them in. Blink ~ blench could be better; you could blench your Christmas lights, but if they're too bright, they might blench you.