Some years ago an eminent and richly experienced editor of Shakespeare revealed in conversation that he had decided to emend the word becomed in the following passage in Romeo and Juliet (iv, ii, 25-7):

“When it was explained to him why he must on no account make away with this form, he at once gave up the idea; and all was well. If this was a startling hint that what was at issue might not be fully clear even to one of the elect, it must be added that in the O.E.D. itself (whose editors were in a much stronger position to deal with something that is essentially a philological question, and a simple one for such as them) some of the copious related material in Shakespeare's vocabulary has been inadequately or erroneously classified and thus left unclear, or has occasionally been misunderstood and misinterpreted. It may therefore be useful to state here explicitly, in a compressed but systematic form, the relevant facts of English word-formation and to show by economical illustration how they apply to Shakespeare's usage.

When, through phonetic or other changes, two originally distinct linguistic elements coalesce under one and the same form, some at least of the original differences in their use and their meaning of course commonly persist. But native speakers of the language (including the 'well' or highly educated) are normally unaware that two distinct entities are involved, let alone that the two forms are not identical in all aspects.