"snuck" is not uncommon here in England. It has a distinct jocular air in my experience; people use it because it sounds funny. I think most people if pushed would say it was technically "wrong", though. Not unlike occasional similarly jocular use of "thunk" as the past tense of "think".
For some reason "dove" for "dive" is much rarer; I basically never encounter it except from US sources, despite it being wholly established in the US, while "snuck" is only most of the way there.
Yes I found it very odd to read that we Brits supposedly say “sneaked“ instead of “snuck”. That's not my experience. He snuck that contentious claim in there.
Franco-Prussian War: The Ems Dispatch was deliberately re-written to make it look as though the French ambassador and the King insulted each other, providing a pretext for the war.
Hyphen War: Not an outright war but the Czech and Slovak disagreement over whether to use a hyphen in the name of the country contributed to the collapse of the state.
And many independence wars have been fought over the right to use the local language / dialect.
When I Googled for “wars that started over grammar” and I saw a link about the Ems Dispatch, my first thought was that it was weird to fight a war over an em dash
As children in north west England in the 70's we always used the word 'snuck'. For example "he snuck up on me and stole my pencil". We may even have used 'snooking' as in 'stop snooking around'. 'Snug' is something else of course.
As well as “snuck” actually being quite common in Britain, I feel I must also mention that in British English (especially Northern English), “bring” *does* have an irregular form along the described lines: “brung”.
I agree that ‘snuck’ is pretty common in the UK. If I (UK, Scotland) heard ‘snuck’ now I'd think it was vaguely weird/jocular/funny, as another commenter said, but I wouldn't identify it as an americanism, or indeed as wrong.
‘Brung’, in contrast, I would firmly identify as jocular, with someone playing with a strong plural. It also sounds like someone being deliberately slightly childish in their word choice, in a way which makes sense after being reminded about children sometimes erroneously using strong verbs by analogy.
‘Dove’ instead of ‘dived’ I would think of as broadly non-standard, but again not as an americanism. Or at least I think I would – it's of course very hard to work out what one actually thinks when asked a question about usage, like this.
Interesting, so “brung” is specifically Northern English dialect, not Northern British dialect. There are a lot of non-standard words that are shared between Scottish and Northern English dialects, but not this one apparently. If I heard someone say “Has the washing been brung in?” I don't think I'd think anything amiss.
Here's an interesting related grammar quirk I've heard.
If you're enough of a nerd to play D&D, you know that characters of the rogue class have a special ability called "sneak attack", which like "attack" is both a noun and a verb.
Well, if it's a verb, what is its past tense? If you're carefully following the persnickety grammar you were caught in school, the past tense should be "sneak attacked". But in practice, I've heard it many times as "snuck attacked".
I'm sorry, but with such articles, I can't not subscribe. I was resisting the "yet another substack subscription", but this is another gem, so I went ahead and subscribed.
As to the article itself, very interesting. Not being a native speaker, if you'd have asked me what's the past tense of "sneak", I would have hesitated. Because while "sneaked" is technically correct, it sounds "weird" to my years, much more so than "snuck". Is it because most of the English-based media I consume is American? Or some other reason?
Hmm, I wonder if sneak become irregular not purely randomly…
I still think of “snuck” as mildly comical. I’m originally British until I was 52 but have lived in Maine since 2002. I don’t think I heard “dove” for “dived” until I came over here, but I woukd have understood “snuck” before, though not used it.
Ah. Now I understand my discomfort when a certain fiction author I read uses -ed and not the irregular version. I definitely dove in — never dived. So why does swim, swam, swum still crip up in my mind?
I have a hypothesis for why sneak became a strong verb. My mother often comments on the strength of 's' words, how well they express the action or object they describe, almost onomatopeic in sound: slash, slit, slither, snake, slosh, splash, splat, sweep/swept, swish, swashbuckler. Sneak is a strong 's' descriptor of the action of creeping past a dangerous obstacle in one's way, and thus, it acquired a strong verb past tense.
Fascinating! I wonder if this is why I distinctly remember hearing the past tense of "squeeze" as "squoze" when I was a child in NYC in the 70s and 80s...
"snuck" is not uncommon here in England. It has a distinct jocular air in my experience; people use it because it sounds funny. I think most people if pushed would say it was technically "wrong", though. Not unlike occasional similarly jocular use of "thunk" as the past tense of "think".
For some reason "dove" for "dive" is much rarer; I basically never encounter it except from US sources, despite it being wholly established in the US, while "snuck" is only most of the way there.
Yes I found it very odd to read that we Brits supposedly say “sneaked“ instead of “snuck”. That's not my experience. He snuck that contentious claim in there.
Wars over grammar (loosely defined):
Franco-Prussian War: The Ems Dispatch was deliberately re-written to make it look as though the French ambassador and the King insulted each other, providing a pretext for the war.
Hyphen War: Not an outright war but the Czech and Slovak disagreement over whether to use a hyphen in the name of the country contributed to the collapse of the state.
And many independence wars have been fought over the right to use the local language / dialect.
> The Ems Dispatch...
Hmm. I suppose if it had been rewritten to be shorter, it would have become the Ens Dispatch.
When I Googled for “wars that started over grammar” and I saw a link about the Ems Dispatch, my first thought was that it was weird to fight a war over an em dash
As children in north west England in the 70's we always used the word 'snuck'. For example "he snuck up on me and stole my pencil". We may even have used 'snooking' as in 'stop snooking around'. 'Snug' is something else of course.
As well as “snuck” actually being quite common in Britain, I feel I must also mention that in British English (especially Northern English), “bring” *does* have an irregular form along the described lines: “brung”.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brung
I agree that ‘snuck’ is pretty common in the UK. If I (UK, Scotland) heard ‘snuck’ now I'd think it was vaguely weird/jocular/funny, as another commenter said, but I wouldn't identify it as an americanism, or indeed as wrong.
‘Brung’, in contrast, I would firmly identify as jocular, with someone playing with a strong plural. It also sounds like someone being deliberately slightly childish in their word choice, in a way which makes sense after being reminded about children sometimes erroneously using strong verbs by analogy.
‘Dove’ instead of ‘dived’ I would think of as broadly non-standard, but again not as an americanism. Or at least I think I would – it's of course very hard to work out what one actually thinks when asked a question about usage, like this.
Interesting, so “brung” is specifically Northern English dialect, not Northern British dialect. There are a lot of non-standard words that are shared between Scottish and Northern English dialects, but not this one apparently. If I heard someone say “Has the washing been brung in?” I don't think I'd think anything amiss.
Here's an interesting related grammar quirk I've heard.
If you're enough of a nerd to play D&D, you know that characters of the rogue class have a special ability called "sneak attack", which like "attack" is both a noun and a verb.
Well, if it's a verb, what is its past tense? If you're carefully following the persnickety grammar you were caught in school, the past tense should be "sneak attacked". But in practice, I've heard it many times as "snuck attacked".
I'm sorry, but with such articles, I can't not subscribe. I was resisting the "yet another substack subscription", but this is another gem, so I went ahead and subscribed.
As to the article itself, very interesting. Not being a native speaker, if you'd have asked me what's the past tense of "sneak", I would have hesitated. Because while "sneaked" is technically correct, it sounds "weird" to my years, much more so than "snuck". Is it because most of the English-based media I consume is American? Or some other reason?
Hmm, I wonder if sneak become irregular not purely randomly…
I still think of “snuck” as mildly comical. I’m originally British until I was 52 but have lived in Maine since 2002. I don’t think I heard “dove” for “dived” until I came over here, but I woukd have understood “snuck” before, though not used it.
What a delight to read!
Amen
Ah. Now I understand my discomfort when a certain fiction author I read uses -ed and not the irregular version. I definitely dove in — never dived. So why does swim, swam, swum still crip up in my mind?
I have a hypothesis for why sneak became a strong verb. My mother often comments on the strength of 's' words, how well they express the action or object they describe, almost onomatopeic in sound: slash, slit, slither, snake, slosh, splash, splat, sweep/swept, swish, swashbuckler. Sneak is a strong 's' descriptor of the action of creeping past a dangerous obstacle in one's way, and thus, it acquired a strong verb past tense.
Fascinating! I wonder if this is why I distinctly remember hearing the past tense of "squeeze" as "squoze" when I was a child in NYC in the 70s and 80s...