ANSWER: Verbs with regular and irregular past tense forms

[mendax]

avidrosette wants to know: When a verb has both an irregular past tense form and a regular one, such as shone/shined or dove/dived, are the words interchangeable or are there rules that govern when each form should be used? Is contemporary English usage leaning more toward the regular forms?

With examples from Good Omens.

Comments

[saavikam77]

Thanks for this!

Does this also include forms that end in 't', such as burned/burnt, learned/learnt, dreamed/dreamt, and leaped/leapt? I had asked about those about 6 months ago, but never saw an answer posted...

[mendax]

Hi, thanks for commenting!

And thank you very much for sending in a question. It is still in our queue waiting for an intrepid Fandom Grammarian to tackle it in depth. I hope you'll be patient with us longer and look for the more comprehensive answer, but meanwhile, I can give you a quick version. It's not quite the same thing as the verbs with both a regular and irregular past tense. Ending a past-tense verb with 't' or 'ed' is more of a regional variation between British English and American English.

[saavikam77]

Ah, thanks! :) I'll be waiting patiently, then. And the note about American/British usage helps a lot. Thanks again!

[avidrosette]

Thank you so much for tackling this question! I love the way you answered it - informative and interesting. It's particularly fascinating to learn that while current usage is favoring the regular form in some cases, in others the opposite is happening. Nice research! Thank you again. :-)

[mendax]

Thank you for asking it! I did enjoy working on this one - I went into it expecting it to be purely a contemporary usage issue, so I was really interested by what I found.