Related: Pronunciation of “Blessed”, Are there any pairs of words like “beloved”/“belovèd”, “learned”/“learnèd” that maintain a semantic difference to the present day?, Where does “wicked” get its /ɪd/ from? (this explains the pronunciation of "naked")

Merriam-Webster and ODO both say that the adjective dogged is pronounced with two syllables, even though the use of the grave accent is incredibly rare. The verb past tense dogged is pronounced with just one syllable.

@PeterShor Yes this is another such example of an adjective, pronounced as if it should have an accent to differentiate it from the verb form but lacking such accentuation.

But did anybody ever write naked with a grave accent? Words like markèd were written with the accent to distinguish them from the similarly spelled past tense marked. But nake is not a verb, so naked is not a possible past tense. So there's no reason to use an diacritical mark.

@PeterShor More research needed, but sacrèd came from a now redundant verb so it is a possibility.

Again, verbs where the -ed in the past tense is pronounced as a separate syllable, like talented and treated never had a grave accent, because there weren't two pronunciations to distinguish between. And sacred would fall into this category if it were a verb.

@sumelic - I didn't say that blessèd is a foreign term, and if you took a moment to read the extract before downvoting, you would have seen that there is a paragraph about imported words and similar English terms.

@PeterShor Would a theoretical accent on treatèd not be useful - if not historical - to distinguish between the verb and the adjective?

I feel like the most interesting part of this question is actually one of the unstated assumptions, so I'd like if you made it explicit: How common was it in the past to write these words with grave accents, and in what contexts did people do this? I.e. was it limited to poetry? Did Shakespeare's original manuscripts use it, or is it something that's added to modern editions to help readers find out the meter? You seem to be assuming that all these words started out being written with grave accents all the time, but I don't see how you know this. Why not ask about it?

@sumelic You make a fantastic point and one about which I would love to explore more. Please suggest an edit to my question adding this factor in as I fear I wouldn't give it justice.

@Josh61: You know, you don't have to delete an answer just because it gets a downvote. You still had a net rep gain on that one. Please don't assume I didn't read the whole extract. That paragraph said that foreign terms with accent marks (which would normally be lost) may continue to be spelled with an accent mark to avoid confusion with similarly spelled English words that do not have an accent.

@sumelic - why are you suggesting to undelete an answer that you have downvoted and would downvote?

@Josh61: I'm happy the answer was deleted, but you don't seem to be. And I think it should be your decision, not mine. I'd hoped you had deleted the answer because you agreed with what I said; I'm not trying to bully you into silence.

The linked article characterizes "the couple was blest" (with a healthy child) as a verbal usage, but "blessèd are the poor" as adjectival; does the part of speech really change by re-arranging the order of subject/copula/predicate? Would you then say "blessèd were the couple with a healthy child" and "the poor are blest"? What about "the blessed-with-a-healthy-child couple"? Also, I always thought that if you say a prayer over a beverage, the result is blest water, whereas blessèd water is more like when you find an oasis in the desert.

@1006a I think you have struck upon my point that the two terms - adjective and verb - have become intertwined since the lack of accentuation, since 'water upon which a prayer has been said' is definitely the blessèd adjective form.

@BladorthinTheGrey - you should have kept your original and good question, and let Sumelic ask its own. Now the question is too broad.

@Josh61: Do you think so? I suppose it covers two topics (spelling and pronunciation) but they are related. Or do you mean it is too broad because it asks for an explanation of the historical development? I thought that kind of question was acceptable.

@Josh61 I take your point that it has grown to rather a big beast of a question, but since sumelic's point is almost certainly woven in to the fabric of the answer to my original question I would argue that it should be kept.

@BladorthinTheGrey - please consider also asking the questions, or part of them, on the Linguistic site - linguistics.stackexchange.com

@Josh61 Your suggestion is a good idea, however all previous questions along this vein have been asked on EL&U, which even has a frequently used etymology tag

Related and possibly useful links: 1) blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/03/diacritics-just-passe - 2) en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:About_Middle_English 3) hornetranslations.com/diacriticsenca.shtml 4) web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Diacritical.pdf

@Josh61: I think your third link (the Scott Horne one) is certainly useful. For what it's worth, I would upvote an answer that cited the section on the grave accent from that page. It provides information about how it was used historically and how the pronunciation of words ending in -ed changed over time.

@sumelic Sometimes the distinction between the verb and the adjective is made by changing the pronunciation of the verb and leaving the "ed" unchanged: The cat lived nine lives and so it was nine lived.