JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.Noun Story continues below advertisement Advertisement The goal was to keep the spat alive and thriving so they could be relocated to a reef in the Chesapeake Bay as part of a broad, ongoing effort in Maryland and Virginia to repopulate native oysters in the Chesapeake and its tributaries. You can say, “The cowboy has broke many broncos.” The only exception is for the definition that means to tame a horse. The past participle is “broken.” Yesterday, he broke his pencil. I was certain that Merriam’s would say that both “broken” and “broke” are acceptable as past participles. When you’re talking about killing someone, the past tense is “slew” and the past participle is “slain.” If you’re talking about a comedian knocking ’em dead, you can say “slayed.”īreak. In the past, he has laid the book on the table.īut it’s unfortunate that the past tense of the intransitive verb “lie” happens to be the present tense of the transitive verb “lay.” Yesterday, he laid the book on the table. “Laid” is both the past tense and past participle. That is, “lay” is transitive and “lie” is intransitive.īut you don’t need to know that to get lay’s past tense forms right. In meaning, the difference between “lay” and “lie” is that “lay” takes a direct object and “lie” does not. The past participle is “lain”: In the past, he has lain on the bed. The simple past tense is “lay”: Yesterday, he lay on the bed. The “lie” that means to recline, however, is trickier. First, you have to separate the meaning of “to tell a fib” from the meaning of “to recline.” To tell a fib takes the simple “lied” for both the past tense and past participle. You can say, “Yesterday, he spit on the sidewalk” or “Yesterday, he spat on the sidewalk.”īut if you want my two cents, I think “spat” sounds more educated. “Spit” and “spat” are both correct as the simple past tense and as the past participle, too. That past tense is “spitted” and the past participle is, too.īut don’t use “spitted” to mean “ejected something from the mouth.” For that, you have two options. First, let’s separate the form that means to skewer something. For its past tense, “hanged” is the standard choice. No matter your meaning, “hanged” and “hung” are both correct for the past tense and past participle.īut if you mean execution, you might want to note Merriam’s extra words of advice. People bend over backward to avoid saying “I hanged the picture on the wall” or “I hung the picture on the wall.”Ĭomplicating matters: The “hang” that means to hang a picture on a wall is a little different from the “hang” that means to execute someone. But when people avoid it, that makes its correct usage sound even stranger. As we saw with “drink,” when a past tense sounds strange, people tend to avoid it. Also acceptable: In the past, he has drank. Past participle: In the past, he has drunk. Simple past tense form: Yesterday, he drank. Here, according to Merriam-Webster’s, are the proper forms of “drink.” Present tense form: Today, he drinks. I hear people going out of their way to avoid saying, “By noon, I had drunk four cups of coffee.” I suspect that’s because they’re not confident this is correct. People seem leery of using this verb in the present perfect or past perfect tenses. With that in mind, here are seven verbs whose past participles require extra care.ĭrink. You need to be on the lookout for them because they can trip you up when you’re not paying attention. You also have to know when to look for answers.Ĭertain words require extra vigilance. Here’s a condensed lesson: For any irregular verb, the past tense and past participle are listed right after the entry word, in that order.īut knowing where to look for answers is just half the battle. Last week, we talked about how to look up past participles in your dictionary.
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