ANOMALOUS

ANOMALOUS, q.d. Irregular; something that deviates from the ordinary Rule and Method of other things of the same kind.
See RULE, etc.
The Word is not compounded of the privative α, and νόμος, Nomos, Law, as is usually imagined; for whence, on such a supposition, should the last Syllable αλ, arise? But it comes from the Greek ἀνώμαλος, anomalous, rough, irregular, formed of the Privative α, and ὁμαλός, homalos, plain, even. Anomalous Verbs, in Grammar, are such as are irregular in their Conjugations; deviating from the Rules or Formulas observed by others. See VERB and CONJUGATION. There are Anomalous Verbs, irregular Inflections of Words, in all Languages.
In English, all the irregularity in our anomalous verbs lies in the formation of the Preter Tense, and passive Participle; though this only holds of the native Germanic or Saxon words, and not of the foreign words, borrowed from the Latin, Welsh, French, etc.
The principal irregularity arises from the quickness of our pronunciation, whereby we change the consonant into 't', cutting off the regular ending 'ed'. Thus, for 'mixed', we write 'mixt' or 'mix'd'; for 'dwelled', 'dwelt' or 'dwell'd'; for 'snatched', 'snatcht', etc.
But this is rather of the nature of a contraction than an irregularity; and is complained of by some of our Politer Writers as an Abuse much to the disadvantage of our Language, tending to disfigure it, and turn a tenth part of our smoothest Words into Clusters of Consonants: which is the more inexcusable, in that the want of Vowels has been the general Complaint of the best Writers. Another Irregularity relates to the preter Tense, and passive Participle. Thus gave, if it were regular, or formed according to the Rule, would make gived in the preter Tense, and the passive Participle: whereas it makes gave in the preter Tense, and given in the passive Participle.