From Useless Etymology, which will be published in October by John Murray Press.

Starting in the fourteenth century, “meseems” was used sort of like the word “methinks,” but instead of “I think” it meant “it seems to me.” A very useful word, meseems. In Middle English and Early Modern English, the word “eftsoons” was used to mean “soon afterward.” The adverb “eft,” meaning “afterward,” shares a root with the modern word “after.” “After,” or “aefter” in Old English, combines this root with a comparative suffix, while “eft” simply has an adverbial -t at its end. Indeed, the word “after” originally meant “farther off” or “more away,” either in time or in physical distance, with the frequentative -ter ending implying extra distance. You’ve heard the words “forego” and “foregone,” as in “a foregone conclusion,” but what about “foredo” and “foredone”? In Middle English, “foredone” was used euphemistically to mean “killed” or “destroyed.” By some English people, “foredone” is still used to mean “overcome with fatigue,” as in “I’m foredone with exertion after working in the sun.” This resembles today’s phrase “we’re done for,” which characters in books and movies say when they’re in grave danger. The word “dern,” meaning “hide” or “conceal,” is still used by some English speakers, most often as the past participle “derned,” but it’s based on an Old English word meaning “secret” or “hidden,” and it shares a root with the word “dark.” In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word “gratulate” meant “to give thanks” or “to show joy,” from the Latin gratulari, meaning the same. Possibly the most joyful Middle English word is “balter,” which means “to tread in a clownish manner, as an ox does the grass.”