Sunday, September 26, 2010

Hangman



"The man hung out under the tree yesterday."
"The man hanged out under the tree yesterday."

The verb “hang” is very interesting in that it has two past tense forms, “hung” and “hanged”. These words are commonly misused and interchanged, though they actually have different applications. The word “hung” is actually the correct past tense form of “hang” in every situation except one, when death is invoked. The correct usage for the word “hanged” is applicable only when someone has cold, dangling feet.

So basically, you don’t ever want to say, “I hanged out under the tree yesterday.”

On another interesting, slightly unrelated note, the same can be said about the words “shocked” and “electrocuted”. The word “electrocuted” implies death.

1 comment:

Pat said...

Terrific post, Ricky. Or maybe I should say, "Electrifying" :-)