A time-taking, taken as a deed or being without any time-taking thing, is taken as a thing, and its name is a Thing-name, as to write.
As in Greek the Infinitive mood, tò gráphein, the ‘to write’; and in Italian, il scrivere, the ‘to write’ (the deed of writing or a writing), so the Infinitive mood-shape of the Saxon time-word was taken as a thing-name after the preposition to, to or for, as to huntianne (to or for the deed to hunt or hunting), as ‘Why does Alfred keep those dogs?’ ‘To huntianne.’
Thence we have our wording—
- ‘Any chairs to mend?’ (any chairs to or for the deed mending),
- ‘A house to let,’
- ‘Letters to write,’
- ‘A tale to tell,’
which is all good English.
It is an evil to our speech that the thing-shape now ending in -ing should be mistaken for the mark-word ending in -ing.
Unhappily two sundry endings of the old English have worn into one shape. They were -ung or -ing and -end.
Singung is the deed of singing, a thing. Singend is a mark-word, as in the wording ‘I have a singing bird.’
Sailing and hunting, in the foregiven thought-wordings, are thing-names, and not mark-words. Sailing is segling, as ‘ne mid seglinge ne mid rownesse’ (neither with sailing nor rowing).—Bede 5, 1.