24 Fantastic Frequentative Words And Where They Come From

Bobble, sniffle, sparkle. Blabber, chatter, flicker. English, along with many other languages, has a delightful class of verbs called frequentatives. Fancy name aside, these words simply show some sort of small or intense repeated action. Chattering, for instance, involves incessant chatting, and sniffling, slight and ongoing sniffing.

English can mark its frequentative verbs with the endings -le and -er. And once you spot the pattern, you’ll start noticing these curious words all over the place. Be careful, though, as English has many more words ending with -le and -er that aren’t frequentatives.

Here’s a list, by no means exhaustive, of 24 of the most unusual and surprising frequentatives hiding right in our everyday speech.

1. TWINKLE

A twinkling star looks like it won’t stop winking and blinking. That’s exactly what its root, the Old English twincan, meant.

2. CRINKLE

Crinkling involves lots of little cringes. Cringe originally meant to shrink or flinch.

3. FIZZLE

Fizzle first meant “to fart silently.” The fizz- comes from fist, an old word for fart, related to feisty.

4. SLITHER

Slither is a creeping and crawling way to slide.

5. STRADDLE

Back in the 16th century, straddle meant “to spread the legs apart,” especially while one was striding.

6. WADDLE

The root of waddle is wade. We can picture a penguin, after wading out of the sea, taking small and short steps as it waddles onto shore.

7. FLUTTER

The root of flutter is fleet. Fleet is an old word meaning float. A baby bird flutters as if to keep itself afloat in the air.

8. SKITTER

If a cat skitters up a tree, it’s doing quite a bit of skiting. Now uncommon, skite means “to run off lightly and quickly.”

9. CLAMBER

And if kids clamber up a wall, they’re climbing up it, hand over foot, with difficulty.

10. JOSTLE

The little pushes and shoves of jostle come from joust—in all of its original horseback collision.

11. TOUSLE

Tousle, which we largely use in tousled hair, is a frequentative of touse, “to handle roughly.” It’s related to the word tease, which originally meant to pull or pluck.

12. MINGLE

The ming in mingle is an Old English word for "mix." It’s also cousin to the -mong in among. Think of mingling, then, as a bustling sort of mixture.

13. SLUMBER

Back in Middle English, to slumber was "to sleep lightly." Its base is an archaic verb slumen, to doze.

14. SWELTER

Sweltering heat makes it oppressively hot. Swelter is the frequentative of the Middle English swelt, to faint—and yet earlier, to die.

15. SWAGGER

Swagger, first recorded in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is likely the frequentative of swag, to sway, especially from side to side. This action was later likened to a boastful gait.

16. LINGER

Linger has lingered in the English language, but the root of this frequentative verb, leng, to length, is no longer around.

17. SWADDLE

To swaddle is to snugly swathe, or wrap up, a baby.

18. NESTLE

We nestle in the sheets like a little critter forming its nest.

19. WRESTLE

Wrestle is a very old frequentative verb. It’s formed from wrest, to twist, turn, or wrench, as wrestlers do on the mats.

20. HAGGLE

When we haggle, it’s as if we’re chopping away at the price. Haggle is a frequentative of the obsolete verb hag, to cut or chop, related to hack.

21. DAZZLE

Something dazzling puts us in a daze.

22. STICKLER

A stickler was originally a moderator or umpire, literally “one who stickles.” The now-rare stickle is a frequentative based on an old verb stight, “to set in order,” as rule-keepers are charged with doing.

23. SWINDLER

A number of English frequentatives are actually borrowed from Dutch and German. Take swindler, from the German Schwindler, “a giddy and extravagant schemer.” In German, Schwindler is the frequentative of swintan, “to languish or disappear” (due to extreme light-headedness and disorientation, apparently).

24. DISGRUNTLED

Finally, we always joke we can be disgruntled but never gruntled. Well, we used to be. The “dissatisfaction” of disgruntled is rooted in gruntle, a little, low grunt. Gruntle was once an active verb in English—and perhaps it could do with some more frequency.