- 1時常（古語、書面；日常說 often。常見於 oft-quoted 這類複合用法）
Oft means “often.” You will almost never hear it in ordinary talk. It belongs to older English, to poems, hymns, and a few frozen phrases: oft-quoted, oft-repeated, oft-forgotten. Shakespeare and old Bibles are full of it; a is not. If a student “I oft go to the park,” it sounds stiff or simply wrong for modern prose — we say often. Though actually, they are the same word in different clothes. Often is basically oft with an extra -en that speakers added later. German still uses oft for “often” every day; English kept oft in the attic and put often in the kitchen. As a living prefix in compounds (oft-cited, oft-maligned) it is still quite common in journalism. As a free word in speech, it is not.
From the word’s history
From Middle English oft, from Old English oft 'often'.
源自古英文 oft「常常」，often 是由它延伸的形式。
組成From Middle English oft (also ofte, often — which became modern often), from Old English oft, from Proto-West Germanic *oftu / *oftō, from Proto-Germanic *uftō “often.” Cognate with German oft, Dutch oft, West Frisian oft / ofte.
同家族的字
- oftenthe modern everyday form of the same word, historically oft plus -en
- oftentimesanother later form in the same often-family
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
oftadv/ɔft/
- 1
dialectaloften; frequently; not rarely
- An oft-told tale
- What I can do, can do no hurt to try: Since you ſet up your reſt 'gainſt remedy: He that of greateſt works is finiſher, Oft does them by the weakeſt miniſter; So holy writ in babes hath judgment ſhown, When judges have been babes.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
- Office of Fair Trading
- orbital flight test
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。