-foldsuffix

(Old English -feald, Northumbrian -fald, Middle English -fald, -fold), corresponds to Old Frisian, Old Saxon -fald (Dutch -voud), Old High German -falt (Middle High German -valt, modern German -falt), Old Norse -faldr (Swedish -fald, Danish -fold), Gothic -falþs; cognate with fold v.¹, and with the equivalent Greek -παλτος, -πλασιος, also, more remotely, with Greek -πλο- in ἁπλός single, διπλός double (= Latin duplus), and probably with the Latin (sim-, du-, tri-) plex. Like the Greek and Latin equivalents, the Germanic suffix is appended to cardinal numerals (and adjectives meaning ‘many’), forming adjectives of which the primary sense is ‘folded in two, three, four, etc.,’ or ‘plaited of two, three, four, etc. strands’ (cf. ‘a threefold cord’), but which serve also and chiefly as arithmetical multiplicatives. The Old English forms, twi-, twio-, twiefeald, ðrifeald, fyðerfeald, which retain the combining form of the cardinal inherited from Germanic, were superseded in early Middle English by new formations on the analogy of fivefold, etc., where the cardinal has the normal form.The adjectives were already in Old English used absolutely in the neuter (e.g. ðrifeald threefold, three times as much and as adverbs (= doubly, triply, etc.), and these uses still continue. In Old English the adverbial notion was also expressed by phrases like be fíffealdum, be manigfealdum, in late English †by fivefold, by manifold. The introduction of the Romanic synonyms double and treble or triple, to which were afterwards added the adapted Latin quadruple, quintuple, etc., has considerably narrowed the use of the derivatives in -fold; indeed the latter seem to be (in many dialects) no longer current among illiterate people. In educated use the strictly multiplicative sense survives chiefly in the adverb and quasi-noun, and with reference to somewhat large numbers (‘He has repaid me tenfold’; ‘that is a thousandfold worse’); the adjectives express rather a plurality of things more or less different, than mere quantitative multiplication: cf. ‘a double charm’ with ‘a two-fold charm’.In Middle English a few new and unanalogical compounds were formed with the suffix, as thickfold adv. (= frequent, -ly), doublefold adj.; but these did not survive into the modern period. Of the nonce-combinations, formed by attaching -fold to indefinite numerals, interrogatives, and the like, the following quots. afford examples.