On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 3:50 PM, Wayne Morrison <tewok@storm-monkeys.com> wrote:
jgoldie247@btinternet.com said:We use it in Marylanders English too.
>> She uses the word "snuck" (which Mark Twain also used, but in his case
>> he was humorously pointing out the ignorance of the character speaking).
>
> We use "snuck" in Scots English.
I use it too. Ironically, this very question came up in a story I was reading this morning before I even checked my email where a character found himself needing to use a past tense of 'sneak' in a sentence and asked his educator boyfriend which was correct. Said boyfriend responded that 'sneaked' is the regular construction and 'snuck' the irregular, but that the latter had become more accepted in recent years.
The OED shows the earliest example of 'snuck' rather than 'sneaked' to be in 1887, but that was in the context of a quote from a lower-class individual. Dictionary.com mentions that both snuck and sneaked are acceptable, but that snuck tends to be used in a more colloquial fashion, including in fiction, where as sneaked is more commonly used in highly formal or literary speech/writing.
word geek? Who's a word geek?
Gwyn
--
Rain and sun shall feed me now,
and roots, and nuts, and wild things,
and rustlings in the midnight wood,
half-mad, like Myrddin, wandering.
--Terri Windling
Rain and sun shall feed me now,
and roots, and nuts, and wild things,
and rustlings in the midnight wood,
half-mad, like Myrddin, wandering.
--Terri Windling
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