I just encountered this construction on a UK site. Is it in common UK use? I never hear it here as a verbal form of "quiet." It sounds very Germanic to me.

I'm familiar with it - particularly in the imperative, I think.

I use it. Oddly it never occurred to me to question it until now.

[BTW, glad to see you back, Asa. You must have had a fine time! ]

I haven't heard of quieten before. Would you use it as in, "Let's quieten the children."?

Yes, that would be one use. Teachers often say to a noisy class "Quieten down now." (As cat says, the imperative) "Everything has quietened down now" would be another.

The verb is quieten and means to make or become quiet.

It can be used like any other verb although my dictionary does describe it as chiefly British.

Across the pond, our teachers would say, "Quiet down now!" The AHD says that "quiet" can be either an intransitive or a transitive verb. How then is 'quieten' different, or isn't it?

Ah, the pleasures of owning a proper dictionary. Quiet v.t. 1526, v.i. 1791; Quieten 1828. So, post-dating the dialect split.

(As cat says, the imperative) "Everything has quietened down now" would be another.

Hmm, er, the example sentence is not an imperative. It's a simple declarative.

Ah, but the preceding sentence to which the parentheses referred was an imperartive.

Ah, but the preceding sentence to which the parentheses referred was an imperartive

Ah, I was confused by the lack of punctuation between the two parts of the paragraph. Sorry.

Teachers often say to a noisy class "Quieten down now." (As cat says, the imperative) "Everything has quietened down now" would be another.

Do I recall that the -en ending was some once a common one? Is that applicable here, or am I thinking of something else?

Very common once as a deadjectival causative: blacken, whiten, redden, gladden, madden, dampen, broaden, deepen, darken, lighten, brighten.

Also the odd denominal: lengthen, strengthen, heighten.

No longer a living suffix: we can't create new words biggen, smallen, bluen, etc. (pace the Simpsons). There is a nineteenth-century word 'louden', so that probably also doesn't occur in American dialects.

I've heard that among Pennsylvania Dutch "outen the lights" used to be common in place of "turn off the lights."

I think you have to make a distinction between the suffix -en that marks the infinitival verbal form in many Germanic languages (English lost its somewhere between Middle and Present-Day English), and the -en verbal inchoative suffix (lengthen, redden).

The Pennsylvania Dutch example is interesting because they've made a verb out of a preposition.

quote:

Also the odd denominal: lengthen, strengthen, heighten.

Don't forget embiggen.