Middle Dutch-ede was shortened to-de in late Middle Dutch, and the suffix was devoiced to-te according to the't kofschip rule. This voiceless variety was then taken to be the suffix proper and the voiced variety gradually fell out of use.
(verbal-participle suffix)Forms theverbal participle of verbs, always following the agent noun.
nevel(“to bring up, to raise”) + -te → [az anyja] nevelte [gyermek](“[the child] raised by [his/her mother]”, literally“his/her-mother-raised child”)
(noun-forming suffix)Forms nouns from certain verbs (cf.-és), incorporating the third-person singular possessive suffix (-e), which can be replaced by other personal possessive suffixes.
Simonyi, Zsigmond.Isten-adta (“God-given”). In:Magyar Nyelvőr (“Hungarian Language Guardian”), vol. XXXVI (1907), pp. 16–35 in the offprint (issue 5, May 15 in theoriginal, pp. 193–205, 264–271).
Syncope sometimes results in the replacement of-ite with-te. For instance,trinte is sometimes found fortrinite(“Trinity”).
Conversely, learned influence may sometimes result in-te with-ite, especially when the word goes back to a Latin original with-itās. This is exemplified by the replacement ofpersonalte(“personality”) withpersonalite in later Middle English (compare Latinpersōnālitās).
As in modern English,-ite tends to attract stress to the antepenultimate syllable, while-te leaves stress where it was on the root.
alternative form of-de;suffix to create preterite tense of verbs if the stem ends in an unvoiced consonant (this form of the suffix is only applicable to verbs which end in-er in the present tense)
