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spin	span 53	spun
speak	spake	spoke 54
spit	spat	spot

(I feel in my bones that spot is a derivative of spit. Spot is the name of the mark made by spitting, which is obviously one of the most primary of human acts.)

swim	swam	swum
spring	sprang	sprung

I imagine that more irregular verbs conform to this one succession than to any one of the others. But all of them, including this one, have been interrupted and obscured by the collision of such independent words as think and thank, i.e.,

think

(thank)

(thunk)

Thank is forced out to avoid collision with

thank

thanked

Now, if freeze had been regularly irregular, it would have been

friz

fraz

frozen

but the present being freeze instead of friz, the procession would normally be

freeze

frez

frozen

I don’t know whether I have made my idea plain: it is not based on visible law so much as on innate feeling. Its validity depends on whether, when I state it to you, you too feel instinctively that amid the clash of strong tenses your own mind would select these forms, in obedience to an overmastering impulse of euphony. The proper jury to render the verdict would be one of poets. I do not suppose anyone will deny that a man reacts to the genius of his mother tongue, without knowing why. There are, and must have been, even deeper depths of reaction than these strong verbs, to account for the choice of vowel sounds in different words, which process in early ages was entirely unconscious.

This, of course, is only to intimate that there must have been “method in the madness” of friz. As for clum, it seems to me that it is visibly clomb descended to the next lower level, and then denuded of its final b, probably by analogy with thumb. Indeed, it is difficult to pronounce that b unless one says clommmb, thummmb! And will you not agree with me that these are inevitable:

(drig)	drag	drog (descended to drug)
drag	(drog)	drug
(dreeg)	(dreg)	(droge)
(drogg)	(drug)	(droog)

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