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When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.

This is a sentence from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I am not sure why dare is in the infinitive, not the third person singular? Is it because that it is somewhat like one should dare not disobey?

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  • I think it's because it's in the subjunctive case.
    – TrevorD
    Commented Dec 28, 2016 at 13:46
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    @TrevorD It's not in the subjunctive mood; rather, it's because dare is here being used as a modal verb (which do not inflect according to person—or in some people's view, at all), rather than as a regular verb. That's mostly a historical difference: dare used to be mostly modal, now it's mostly not.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Dec 28, 2016 at 13:52
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Thanks. I knew the form "dare" was correct, but was only guessing why!
    – TrevorD
    Commented Dec 28, 2016 at 13:56
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    @Janus: So according to these people who don't believe modals inflect, "one dare not disobey" is modal, but "one dared not disobey" is no longer modal? I don't believe that. Doesn't "one dared not disobey" have to be modal, because otherwise you would need do support? "One dared not to disobey" is clearly wrong.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Dec 28, 2016 at 15:13
  • @PeterShor Interesting question! Modal dare and need are today used mainly in negative and interrogative contexts: she need never, he dare not. For inflections, dare further has an old preterite inflection durst which although still sometimes found in regional speech is otherwise relegated to archaizing or rusticizing use; Gollum used it, for example. But even durst has no 3s inflection, being in the preterite where only be observes a singular–plural distinction (in the indicative).
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Dec 28, 2016 at 15:16

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