Look what I've trove !

"I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved, and next to nature, art.
I warm both hands before the fire of life:
It sinks, and I am ready to depart."

I have known this scrap of verse since I was eight or nine. I had a teacher at my first school who made us learn poetry by heart, and although at the time I can't have had much idea what it was all about, I am actually very grateful to him for making me appreciate the sound of words.

The reason I quote this now is because of that lovely word 'strove', a sort of blend of strive and drove, or string and stove; and I am reminded of it by a sentence in an article by a (presumably) professional writer who tells readers of the Radio Times that he 'found a trove'. His actual words are "What we found was a treasure trove".

A reasonably well educated writer should have learnt, before using the word at all, that the term 'trove' is an English rendering of the past participle of the French verb 'trouver', meaning to find. So, since the French, unlike us English, have a habit of putting an adjective or participle after a noun instead of before it, 'treasure trove' means 'treasure found'. You yourself may, if you are lucky, find treasure: and if so, there it will be, before your very eyes, 'trésor trouvé', treasure found. As I burbled in my last posting, archaeologists tend to talk rather carelessly about 'a find'. But it is even wilder to speak or write of 'a found'.

Let's get it straight: there is no such thing, and never has been such a thing, as 'a trove'.

Look what I've trove !