[…] as regards change of form, we have to recognize, as the grand tendency underlying all the innumerable and apparently heterogeneous facts which it embraces, the disposition, or at least the readiness, to give up such parts of words as can be spared without detriment to the sense, and so to work over what is left that it shall be more manageable by its users, more agreeable to their habits and preferences.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 49-50

[…] for a long time there has existed in English speech a tendency to work over such verbs [verbs belonging to a strong conjugation], abandoning their irregularly varying inflection, and reducing them to accordance with the more numerous class of the regularly inflected like ‘love’, ‘loved’ […]
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 39