On the MSN home page, the title of the article is “Curfew quietens France riots.” The American Heritage® Dictionary informs me that this means “To make or become quiet” and that it is “Chiefly British.”
Which leaves me with many questions: Why are we seeing British usage on MSN? What the <bleep> is a phrasal verb? Why can’t they just say “quiets riots”? Are 3 enough, are 5 too many?*
*Thank you, Chevy Chase.
My understanding is that the -en suffix usually indicates that the object of the sentence is turned into what is described by the word -en was added to. Cf. moisten, fasten, etc.
A phrasal verb is a verb made up of two or more words. They are not uncommon in English, and are usually what people are wrongly pointing to when they say you are ending a sentence with a preposition (the particle of the verb – the non-verb part – is often an preposition when used without it).
For instance, there’s “to look up to” meaning “to admire.” It has a different meaning from “to look” (to observe) or even “to look up” (to research).
There’s also “to put up with” meaning “to tolerate.” Again, it’s different from “to put” (to place) or even “to put up” (to can food for storage).
Dictionaries usually list phrasal verbs under their main verb form, but many people, while using them all the time, don’t understand that verbs in English can consist of more than one word.
Clearly, “quieten” is not a phrasal verb. I notice that my spell check doesn’t even flag it as an error.
And as the quote attributed to Winston Churchill (“That is the kind of pedantry up with which I will not put!” - though I’m not certain it’s confirmed that he ever said it) demonstrates, trying to move the particle of a phrasal verb to another spot in the sentence usually creates something bizarre and clearly ungrammatical - unlike actual prepositions, you simply can’t avoid stranding them sometimes.