couldst

«couldst» in Mova's early modern english dictionary: could — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

kind

archaic form

modern equivalent

could

part of speech

verb, past tense of can, with thou

meaning for a pupil

Was able to, with "thou" as the subject. tree →

how it differs from today

No longer used; today we say "could" with "you."

examples

• Thou only couldst have conquered Circe. (Tanglewood Tales) tree →
• Pots of money didst thou bury but thou couldst not hide them. (Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore) tree →
• "O mother, mother," cried Cadmus, "couldst thou but have seen my sister before this hour!" (Tanglewood Tales) tree →

tests

manual 5; corpora 8 (Torah 0, tales 8, Sefer Yetzirah 0); EWT 0; ratio 0.9 (Torah alone 0.0); Wiktionary no archaic label

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «couldst» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.