A history of the English Language

114.
The Adjective.
In the adjective the leveling of forms had even greater consequences. Partly as a result of 
the sound-changes already described, partly through the extensive working of analogy, 
the form of the nominative singular was early extended to all cases of the singular, and 
that of the nominative plural to all cases of the plural, both in the strong and the weak 
declensions. The result was that in the weak declension there was no longer any 
distinction between the singular and the plural: both ended in -
e 
(
blinda
> 
blinde
and 
blindan
>
blinde
). This was also true of those adjectives under the strong declension whose 
singular ended in -
e
. By about 1250 the strong declension had distinctive forms for the 
singular and plural only in certain monosyllabic adjectives which ended in a consonant in 
Old English (sing. 
glad,
plur. 
glade
). Under the circumstances the only ending which 
remained to the adjective was often without distinctive grammatical meaning and its use 
was not governed by any strong sense of adjectival inflection. Although it
4 
For the use of the apostrophe in the possessive, see § 180. 
A history of the english language 148

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is clear that the -
e
ending of the weak and plural forms was available for use in poetry in 
both the East and West Midlands until the end of the fourteenth century, it is impossible 
to know the most usual status of the form in the spoken language. Certainly adjectival 
inflections other than -
e,
such as Chaucer’s 
oure aller cok,
were archaic survivals by the 
close of the Middle English period.
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