Like most be- verbs in English, betide is a real old-timer and has now reached retirement age, taking only casual employment in the expression woe betide. In its heyday, betide had work every day as a transitive verb (with meaning similar to befall) and an intransitive verb, with the meaning "happen as if by fate." Shakespeare uses it like "become" in "If he were dead what would betide of me?" (Richard III)

Carefree lightheartedness is usually a Good Thing, unless those around you are expecting a bit more seriousness, in which case they may characterize you as blithe. The word is Germanic in origin and is related to bliss. The favorite companion of blithe is spirit: the two together are the title of a Noel Coward play. But blithe also attaches to disregard, assumption, and indifference.

Today's verb can look back on a distinguished career beginning in Old English. Rend has remained true to its original meaning, "tear by force," but in modern English it has settled into a more literary role than it began with. The past tense rent is irregular but in keeping with lookalike verbs such as send and bend. The adverb asunder is a regular companion of rent, also the past participle of rend.

Archery has supplied a handful of metaphors that find a home in mainstream English. Today's noun upshot is one of them. Its original meaning was a final shot in an archery match. From this it morphed in very little time to mean "consequence, result, outcome," all of these being things that happen after, and as a result of, something else. A surprising number of upshots are characterized as being "practical."