Stepped aside

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>         Did ye ever hear of such a piece of Impudence!  The former part
>of our Account came out on Monday, but before Tuesday-night he was
>march'd off, or in other terms Step'd aside.  Only the ungrateful
>Varlet, had first exercised a faculty of his (which ye shall presently
>hear of) on the Money and other purloinables, of such Friends as had
>civilly Entertained him.  His very Shirt (being Stolen, you must note)
>had the Courage to take a Thief by the Throat.
>         Boston News-Letter, #82, November 5, 1705, p. 2, cols. 1-2
>
>The passive voice (he was marched off or stepped aside) makes it seem
>that this means "arrested", a sense not in the OED, but it's clear from
>the article as a whole that the villain was still at large.  The OED
>has only from English sources.
>
>OED (step, verb, 39b, to abscond) 1620 in Crt. & Times Jas. I (1848)
>II. 210 Sir John Samms is stept aside and gone for
>Bohemia,..being..ready to sink under the burthen of his debts. 1689
>LUTTRELL Brief Rel. (1857) I. 595 The cook was sent to Newgate, but the
>lord Griffin himself, hearing of it, is stept aside. a1715 BURNET Own
>Time (1823) II. 153 They did not know whether he might not have stepped
>aside for debt.

It seems to me that this is not really passive voice but rather a
participle, with "step [aside]" intransitive.

"He goes" > "He has gone"/"He is gone".
"He flees" > "He has fled"/"He is fled".
"He steps aside" > "He has stepped aside"/"He is stepped aside".

I guess this is an old-fashioned form in English, although parallel to
usual forms in German and Dutch (I think).

If I don't have things right, maybe one of the experts can correct me.

-- Doug Wilson