Question: While watching television the other night, I heard the word "con man" and got to wondering. Where does the term come from? How long has it been around?

- C.G., Mont-vale, N.J.

Answer: Though con men have been with us for ages, the term "con man" wasn't applied to them until the late 19th century in the United States. Our evidence for the term begins in 1889 with a citation from Oregon's Portland Mercury. The verb "con" meaning "to swindle" made its appearance a few years later, in 1896, in "Artie" by American author George Ade.

"Con man" is a shortening of the earlier phrase "confidence man," which first appeared in the New Orleans Picayune in 1849. The verb counterpart "confidence" was in use by 1875, when it was spotted in the Chicago Tribune.

"Confidence men" are so-called because the swindles they engage in usually require the collusion of the person being swindled. The con man must gain his mark's confidence or trust before the "con" can take place. And many unfortunates have found that the statement made in 1889 still holds true: "It does not take an unsophisticated countryman to get swindled by the con man."

Question: Recently I wrote "stopt" in a note to a friend, and she commented on this spelling of "stopped." Isn't it correct to use the "t" ending for the past tense of some verbs?

- A. J., Burlington, Vt.

Answer: Past tense forms like "trapt," "jumpt," "claspt," and "stopt" have fallen out of general use. If found in a dictionary at all they're likely to be labeled "archaic." The "t" spelling of the past tense is a holdover from the 16th to 18th centuries, when the suffix "ed" following a voiceless consonant was often written as "t" in accordance with its pronunciation. (A "voiceless" consonant is one that's uttered without any vibration of the vocal cords.)

Some "t" forms live on. "Blest" can still occasionally be seen as a variant of "blessed," especially when functioning as a past participle, as in "helping the less blest." "Past," which originated as the past participle of "pass," has become established as an adjective, a preposition, a noun, and an adverb, but it is no longer used as a form of the verb.

There are, of course, whole categories of verbs whose past tense is spelled only with "t" - words like "crept," "meant," "wept" and "felt." All these verbs have one characteristic in common - the long vowel sound in the present tense is shortened in the past tense. A few verbs have two different endings depending on whether or not the vowel is shortened - "leaped" or "leapt," "dreamed" or "dreamt." Many of these "t" forms are very old. "Feld," "feeled," and "felt" were all used as the past tense of "feel" in the 14th century. By the 17th century, however, only "felt" remained.

The oldest past tenses spelled with "t" can be traced back to the period of Old English. They're seen in some of the irregular verbs like "bought," "thought" and "brought." In most cases, though, the "t" form is of Middle English or Modern English origin. In a few cases the process was reversed and the "ed" form was adopted as a modern spelling even though it was at variance with both the word's pronunciation and history. The original past tense of "kiss," for example, was not "kissed" but "kist," which was derived from Old English "cyste."

Another group of past tenses spelled with "t" are so-called contracted forms, such as "built," "spent" and "sent." Long forms of the past tense of "build" were "bilded" or "bylded" during the 14th to 16th centuries; during that same period the shortened forms "bilde" and "bylled," as well as the past participle "bylt," were used. "Built" appeared as past tense in the late 16th century, but "build-ed" also was used well into the 17th.