Now that I think about it, in the company where I’m currently employed, people use the word “fixed” to describe bugs that are taken care of, and when some of them pronounce it, they don’t omit the letter “e”, and say it “fixeeed”. Hearing this abhorrence never fails to make my hackles rise :evil:
I think Wordsworth and his contemporaries would have pronounced the “-ed” termination much the same as we do, in their everyday English. Even in the 1590s, Spenser (for instance) omits the “e” in most past tense forms (e.g.“arrayd” for “arrayed”); where he does include it, it signifies that the “-ed” is to be pronounced as a separate syllable, usually for metrical reasons.
(It seems the “-èd” pronunciation lingered as a poetic licence, long after it had disappeared from ordinary speech. Thus the function of the form peep’d is to remove any doubt on the reader’s part as to whether the poet intended to avail himself of that poetic licence.)
I had noticed that Tennyson seemed to regularly use 'd rather than the -ed ending, and I’d never thought of his usage of this poetic device ('d) as being something that would actually alter pronunciation (not in his day or today). Thanks for the history of the use of 'd.
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As I have already said above and as has been repeated rather more verbosely above, the removal of the ‘e’ is to indicate in the poetic line that the ‘ed’ is not separately stressed. In other words ‘yes’ the pronunciation of 'd would be as if it were ‘ed’ in a line of prose.
As Ralf says, you should not write things such as wander’d. This is simply something that poets sometimes do (or used to do). Since the word wandered is pronounced as only two syllables anyway, there is not actually any reason that you “must” ever use this form (wander’d) – not even in poetry. Maybe you should just think of this use of 'd as nothing more than an out-dated poetic “frill”.
What might be more logical or easy for you to understand are words such as o’er. This is a contracted form of the word ‘over’. This is a poetic device (“syncope”) that is used to change this two-syllable word into a one-syllable word.
As Ralf also mentioned, if you wrote want’d, that would mean that the word should be pronounced as one syllable rather than two – and I can’t imagine anyone being able to do that either!
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To pick up on an earlier point: the removal of the ‘e’ in peep’d is not to indicate that the ‘-ed’ is not separately stressed, but that it isn’t separately pronounced. (If “peeped” were pronounced as a disyllable, the “-ed” would be unstressed.)
The converse of the poetic 'd is -èd: this shows that the syllable is to be pronounced (as in the adjective “learnèd”).
There are thus 3 possible forms of the past tense of “peep”, in current notation:
peeped — pronounced as 1 syllable
peep’d — ditto; a “poetic” form
peepèd — pronounced as 2 syllables
The #3 form is very rare. You might use it if you wanted to demonstrate how “peeped” was pronounced in the 15th century.
The “poetic” forms (“peep’d”, “wander’d”, “sigh’d”) are still very popular with amateur writers of verse; I suppose they seem to give a “poetic” look to the page.
First of all, I understand that this is just an old-fashioned poetic usage and that I shouldn’t use it, but I just want to make things clear.
Actualy, what led me to ask about “want’d” was that I was stilled confused by the “not separately stressed”. Sincerely speaking, I don’t know what you mean. (Please do forgive me for my dumbness (again) (+_+))
Specificly, I don’t know whether “not separately stressed” mean the same as “not separately pronounced” or not (For this, I’d like to thank MrP so much for his always understanding my thick skull). From all the “exercise on word stress” that I’ve done in tests and exams in my country, I understand “stress” as “an extra force used when pronouncing a particular word or syllable”. And thus, in a word with one syllable like “peeped”, how can the “ed” be stressed? (when it’s not even a syllable). And so why must they change “peeped” into “peep’d” so that the “ed” would be not separately stressed? Anyway the “ed” can’t be stressed in both versions, can it?
That’s why I suspect I may have misunderstand your meaning for “stressed”. Do you mean “not separately pronouced”? And thus, is this right:
peeped /pi:pt/
peep’d /pi:p/
And sumarily, does the change of “peeped” into “peep’d” change its original pronunciation at all?
Once again, thank you so much for your patience with me, and sorry so much for my dumbness. +_+
