Talk:succumb

Missing noun?

This looks like a noun:

• 1882, Thomas Bendyshe, The Last Christian (page 42)

  You must believe that with one single breath / There is a Power that can do to death, / Aye! not to death, but absolute nothingness, / The forces of the immeasurable abyss, / And light, and heat, and motion make succumb / To nothing, in a nothingless vacuum; […]

Equinox ◑ 20:53, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

I believe that "succumb" is used as a verb here, not a noun.

Some other examples of this usage of causative/auxiliary "make" + verb include:

2018, J.B. Miles, The Free Will Delusion: How We Settled for the Illusion of Morality‎^[1], Troubador Publishing Limited, page 7:

How fair is that, though, that we get to blame and make suffer the one who the mad scientist got to in the cradle […]

2019, Sophie White, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana‎^[2], UNC Press Books, page 128 (plate 26):

On the right is the executioner who has "volunteered to burn and make suffer the prisoners of war.”

2016, Geraldine Legendre, Topics in French Syntax‎^[3], Routledge:

Men are easy to make succumb to the charm of Hollywood actresses.

1910, Virginia Pollard Robinson, A Changing Psychology in Social Case Work‎^[4], volume 10, University of North Carolina Press, page 1095:

Fourth. I revoke item seventh of the Fourth Paragraph of my said will, by which I make bequeath to certain of my grand-children, that my purpose may be more comprehensive […]

2001, Joseph Fewsmith, China Since Tiananmen: The Politics of Transition‎^[5], Cambridge University Press, page 7:

The decisions they make bequeath the institutions and the rules of the game with which their successors must deal.

1596, Unknown, A Knack to Know an Honest Man‎^[6], Cuthbert Burby:

DUKE: What wile thou make bequeath of others lands: why man he liucs againe.
SER: Firſt tell me I am dead my Lord.

1991, Jan Molenda, “The Formation of National Consciousness of the Polish Peasants and the Part They Played in the Regaining of Independence by Poland”, in Acta Poloniae Historica‎^[7], volumes 63-64, page 124:

Way back in 1917 he wrote: "Indeed we must call the patriot not only someone who does realize his relation to the nation but also someone who does it at another level suitable to his intellectual development, so ive must also regard as the patriot an illiterate peasant who does not even call himself a Pole, but a Kurp, Mazur or simply a Catholic, who does not know what Poland is, whom the thought of independence fills with fear that it may bring back socage and who despite it all sticks to his land, his language and customs, who feels unconsciously a bond with his countrymen and whom no persecutions will ever make renounce his nationality of which however he is unaware."

All of these usages with "make" as a causative auxiliary verb seem to require verbs that connote helplessness or obligation.

I believe that “make succumb”, specifically, may be an anglicization of the French faire succomber. Another data point supporting this (see also: "Topics in French Syntax" quote above) is that the French company Jean Paul Gaultier markets its Classique perfume with the phrase "The irresistible tentation, a perfume of contrasts, carnal and inebriant, to seduce and make succumb"—in the original French, Un parfum de contrastes, charnel et enivrant, pour séduire et faire succomber.

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 09:56, 11 October 2023 (UTC)