Suffer not to suffer

Consider the word “suffer” in the King James Bible. Many people assert that it has “changed meaning.” In the Bible we find examples “suffer” (permit, allow) and “suffer” (endure pain). The meaning of some words in the KJV may not be the first meaning some contemporary English speakers think of when they hear these words. That does not mean the meaning has changed. My Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary supports the so-called “changed” meaning as current. Suffer means “to allow” (# 4) – substantially the same definition that some claim has “changed” and does not mean this anymore. Additionally, it is not hard to search for the word “suffer” in the KJV and find there it can mean both/either “allow” and “to endure pain.” Look the word up on Dictionary.com and see definition 2.3 is “to tolerate or allow” (the same meaning some claim no longer exists!). Maybe these people mean to say that we seldom use it that way anymore. If so, say that. That is not the same as saying it no longer carries that meaning in its semantic range.

A quick survey of the word “suffer” in the Bible shows it did not “change meanings.” It meant BOTH permit/allow and endure (hurt, bad things) in 1611. For example, compare Matthew 3:15 (permit, “Suffer it to be so now”) and 1 Peter 3:14 (endure, “if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake”). Notice its different usage within a few verses in the Gospel of Mark.

• Mark 5:19 Howbeit Jesus suffered (allowed) him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.
• Mark 5:26 and had suffered (endured) many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,

According to Etymology.com, suffer is from mid-13c., sufferen, “allow to occur or continue, refrain from hindering, fail to prevent or suppress,” also “be made to undergo, endure, be subjected to” (pain, death, punishment, grief, injury, humiliation); from Anglo-French suffrir, Old French sofrir “bear, endure, resist; permit, tolerate, allow…” According to the site, the “use and sense development [of suffer] in English are entwined with the story of Christ’s Passion and martyrs’ tales.” There is a common element of both meanings of “suffering” in submitting to endure pain or persecution.