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I was kind of surprised to find that one of the inscriptions on one of the towers at the Hoover Dam has what I thought was a typo, but I want to know if I'm in the wrong because I can't find anything online about this being a typo.

Image of inscription

The tower says:

"Since primordial times, American Indian tribes and Nations lifted their hands to the Great Spirit from these ranges and plains. We now with them in peace buildeth again a Nation." (https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/history/essays/artwork.html)

In the second sentence it seems that "buildeth" should read "build". Am I missing something? or is this a typo that has survived without comment for some 80 years on a very famous monument?

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    I don't know that you can rightly call something graven in stone a "typo". :)
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Aug 16, 2021 at 1:03
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    I would say that you are right and that whoever wrote the inscription (enscript is a computer program by the way) didn't fully understand the use of the old third person singular with the 'th' ending. I'm prepared to be told that I'm wrong but, if someone does that I expect to see a full explanation.
    – BoldBen
    Commented Aug 16, 2021 at 1:05
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    @tchrist I was looking up what one doth call it when you wrote that, but all I've gotten so far is dad jokes - it's a monumental error.
    – Phil Sweet
    Commented Aug 16, 2021 at 1:12
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    It was formerly known as the Boulderth Dam and yes, it's not a typo, but rather a litho.
    – DjinTonic
    Commented Aug 16, 2021 at 2:03
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    Perhaps the rules were different for concrete verbs.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Oct 6, 2021 at 14:27

3 Answers 3

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In Middle English, -eth was a possible plural verb ending, as well as a third-person singular verb ending. The form of plural verbs varied by dialect. See the following page, “present tense” column “south”: Middle English Tense Inflection.

Or the verb table on this Wikipedia page.

The “th” sound is represented by the letter “thorn” there: -eþ.

I don’t know if that is the reason for the usage on the inscription.

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    They should have stuck to plains English.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Oct 6, 2021 at 15:03
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Sure, in Old English, "byldaþ" was used for the plural (þ being thorn, the old way to write th). A relic of this seems to even be present in Middle English (the following shows two forms though, I guess showing that the language was changing):

Furst þay [bees] bulden þe kynges hous..and þerafter þay buldeþ oþer hous.

(From John de Trevisa's translation of Bartholomew de Glanville's De Proprietatibus Rerum, a1398)

However, in the context of the quote on the dam, it looks to me more like hypercorrection, wording created by people who knew that archaic English sometimes used -eth but weren't really familiar with it. After all, Shakespeare's English is the archaic English that's typically emulated, not the English centuries before that.

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    On a monument like the Hoover Dam, you can’t just use any Old English.
    – user205876
    Commented Oct 6, 2021 at 15:51
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Yes it is always singular, it is probably a mistake

-eth (source)

suffix

an ending of the third person singular present indicative of verbs, now occurring only in archaic forms or used in solemn or poetic language

buildeth (source)

verb

(archaic) third-person singular simple present indicative form of build

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