approacheth or approaches

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hi,

I read it from a piece of news entitled: American burns passport to stay in Taiwan as ‘doomsday’ approacheth
chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/nati … -burns.htm

In the beginning, I thought it was a typo. However, I found a definition later:
Third-person singular simple present indicative form of approach
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/approacheth

But in many other well-known online dictionaries, I still cannot find the word. I’d like to know more about the usage of this word and the differences between the word and ‘approaches’ .

Thank you.

Justin

2

Hi, this seems like a very good answer: answers.yahoo.com/question/index … 518AA1qiy7

The “eth” ending is just an archaic form of the third person present tense: “doomsday approaches”.

There is nothing special about “approach”, you can use the eth ending with any verb.

I think the writer may have used this form to highlight the feeling of “doomsday” as something predicted in the middle ages, to give it a more mysterious feel, but it still sounds a bit odd to me.

3

Thank you for the guidance, Luschen.

Hopefully, Hurricane Sandy doth not bring you troubles.

Justin