Pled versus pleaded

@ww

- "inkhorn-terms" as "agile, education, harass, scientific, strenuous" - …

Narrowly speaking, the inkhorn years were ruffly between 1550 and 1650; more broadly, some put it to any unneeded latinate. Again, the narrower meaning of inkhorn is that it is an unneeded, made up latinate. A few put it to all outlander words. Mostly, the 'war of words' was about the latinates tho Robert Cawdrey did whinge about the French and Italian words brought back by some from their trips to France and Italy. Not all words brought in or made up (from Latin) in these years were inkhorns.

The word inkhorn is mainly for those Latinates (Anglicized Latin, tho sum might hav had a Greek root, they were mostly taken from the Latin shape) that were BOTH showy AND there was already another word for whatever they were cobbling together the latinate for (either an earlier French/Latin borrowing or an Anglo-Teutonish word).

*Agile - The Oxford Dict Online (OED). says it came into the tung in ME which would put it before the Inkhorn years (I know that agility is late ME); nonetheless, not needed … nimble, lightsome; shrewd, sharp, quick-witted.
*Education - not an inkhorn in the narrow look (1530s … before the inkhorn years), tho it is unneeded for 'learning, schooling, knowledj, teaching'.
*Harass - hardly an inkhorn, its roots are Teutonish (akin to harry, harrow, harum-scarum)
*Scientific - right timeframe but what word did it bestead? If there was not an earlier Fr./La. word or A-T word, then it's not an inkhorn. 'Science' itself is ME. I'd hav to look to see if there was a 'science-like' or something like that for an adjectiv.
*Strenuous - Right timeframe and not needed (a true inkhorn); there are other words like hard, tuff, ruff, tiring, backbreaking, asf.

You don't think that we're condition'd from almost from the first day of school that latinates somehow show a higher learning? Take a look at this list of "100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know" http://blog.writeathome.com/index.php/2012/11/100-words-every-high-school-graduate-should-know/ Why the heck does anyone — much less a HS grad — need to know 'inculcate'? That only one among many that need to toss'd off that list.

There are folks who luv Latin … and that's fine. Only luv it when you speak Latin, not when speaking English. It was the Latin lovers who wrought even more havoc on English spelling. I can't blame 'debt' on the French lovers! The 'b' was put in by the LL. I can't blame the 's' in island on the FL … again, it was the LL.

Our forebears after 1066 held French/Latin up high while trampling on English as "rude". They didn't do it for that French was cool … that might hav been a small deal of it for some … but for that they had been it beaten into their heads in school (and still is). Many were made to learn Latin and French … but not the Old English roots. In olden of days of yore, university students HAD to speak Latin or French at ALL times on campus … even outside of the classroom! So it should amaze no one that academics are the biggest abusers of latinates followd by burocrats.

You whinge about being deem'd for the note of latinates but you and others are as willing, if not more so, to fordeem those who shun them! And that's the whole nub of it isn't it! … Why should those showy latinates be thought of as any better than ones of the A-T root? Only that we'v been so taught … or some might say … brainwash'd.

You're right … One shouldn't look down (condescend) on those whose writings are heavy with the latinates; rather, one should feel ruth for them for often they're trying to dazzle with words rather than saying anything meaningful. At least the penny-a-liners where getting paid to make stretch their writings … and when I was told that term papers need to be X pages long, heck yeah I often put in the longest words I could find but it was still less than those who were in fields where they would like spend their lives in academia … like history … But why do others put out the long-winded, idle words for wit? Truthfully, when they pull out a whole boatload of latinates, it's hard not to laff at 'em.

I'll leave you with a bit of an Oxford sermon from "Recollections of Oxford," by G. V. Cox:

"A system thus hypothetically elaborated is, after all, but an inexplicable concatenation of hyperbolical incongruity."

Inexplicable indeed! LMAO!

@WW
"Every time one writes the -our ending in English, then you're giving "homage" to France" - This is the sort of balderdash …
-- True is true whether it rankles one or not. There is no fonetic nor etymological grounds for the -our ending in many words. Colour is from Old French colour, from Latin color. The -our spelling is a holdover from OF. Thus, "ispo facto", it's a 'homage' to French. OTOH, If you say 'kəlo͝or, then by all means write it that way!

"I wasn't talking about the Gaels; I was talking about the Britons the Anglo-Saxons displaced,… "
-- I said Gaelic, which is a broader latter day word for the Celtic tung which is broken into sundry dialects (or sunder tungs even) to inhold Brythonic Celtic tho I don't think there are any speakers of Brythonic left. ... So my bad ... Let me say it this way: I don't speak a Gaelic/Celtic tung. English is a Teutonish tung so it's a red herring to bring up the Gaelic/Celtic dwellers that were there before the Saxons.

"So they get a by too" - Sorry! Haven't a clue what you're on about."
-- Go back to what you said earlier: "I also find that the Anglo-Saxons, (and Norsemen, or in fact anyone vaguely "teutonic") who also started off as invaders or raiders, seem to get a very easy ride in your view." …
-- Celtic words in English get a by too (along with the other Teutonish tungs). About the words that I'm hard on are the after 1066 French/Latin ones. It is said that Old Norse and Old English could be understood by the other. So when the Norse (to inhold the Danes) came, the words were so unalike as when the N-F came.

""The Takeover, in the end, brought in some 10,000 French/Latin words! Of those, about 75% are still with us."- I wonder why? Linguists usually reckon that it's because they were found to be useful."
-- "Useful"? Is that from one's feelings? Is that "useful" for that (1) they shove'd aside the Anglo word and thus made the gap that they then fill'd? Or (2) "useful" for that there was no word and they needed to be borrow'd? Is 'agile' any more "useful" than 'nimble'? I think most of those words fall under (1).

If one is trying to get business or money from the Norman-French (keep in mind that thruout most of this timeframe that French and Latin were the tungs of government, the courts, and the church) then words like 'agile' would be more useful! And that's why French/Latin words shove'd aside so many the Anglo words. The words didn't come into English from borrowing to fill a gap but from needing to deal with the Norman-French overlords. Same ol' tale … French/Latin good, English "rude". I don't know who Crystal is but what we know is that French was the tung of the king's court until 1399 and French, as well as Latin, was still noted in Parliament (parliament is a French begotten word) and the courts after than til well into 1400s. It recks not how much "Anglicization" of the Norman-French nobility had taken place, they still had to know French/Latin to deal with the government and courts. Now, the Norman-French nobility didn't switch off from French like one switches off a light! They only laid the French/Latin words on top of an English grammar frame. It's not as if the noble woke up and said, "I think I'll write nimble insted of agile today." He kept saying agile only in English. So for anyone to try say that the Norman-French had little impact on English is … to note your word … balderdash!

Anent Lanfranc and Stigand, you likely know that in this timeframe that the church and politics were tied at the hip. Even before the N-F, the bishops were said to be part of the Witenagemot. Indeed, it wasn't the Pope but King Edward who put Stigand in the spot of archdiocese of Canterbury! Do you truly think that it only "happen'd" that Stigand was besteaded a short time after Lucky Bill took over? Or that it only "happen'd" that Billy's friend Lanfranc was put in the spot? Or that it only "happen'd" that "Lanfranc accelerated the process of substituting Normans for Englishmen in all preferments of importance …"? That it only "happen'd" that Stigand was imprison'd and that Billy seiz'd all his land? … If you believe all those only "happen'd", then I hav a few bridges that I'd like to sell you!

Pinning dates on writs in OE … even in ME … is iffy at best and often given a wide range of years. However the Historical Bible Society has on their website:

In 1066, the Norman Conquest marked the beginning of the end of the Old English language and initiated profound changes in its vocabulary. The project of translating the Bible into Old English gradually ended after that process began.

I don't think that Lucky Bill gave a hoot about whether the Bible was being set into English or not. He had his man as the archbishop and he was more than willing to let the church do pretty much what it wanted as long as it back'd him.

I think one the first things to come out in ME for setting the Bible into English was the Ormulum c1150. Wikipedia says this:

Middle English Bible translations (1066-1500) covers the age of Middle English, beginning with the Norman conquest and ending about 1500. Aside from Wycliffe's Bible, this was not a fertile time for Bible translation. English literature was limited because French was the preferred language of the elite, and Latin was the preferred literary language in Medieval Western Europe.

I don't hate France … even dated a French woman for a while. I'v been to Paris and gave it my best shot, as bad as it was, at speaking French while I was there. France isn't trying to shove French down our throats. That was Lucky Bill and his henchmen. They started the ball going and set the mindset … the N-F nobility kept it up for a few hundred years but, sadly, otherwise most of the harm done to English has been from English speakers themselves who can't seem to break away from the awe that so many hold for French and Latin.

"It was the Latin lovers ....." like Romeo and Juliet?

@jayles - I'll return your question. Why use "Moon eclipse", when we have a perfectly good expression already. (Unless you are a believer in "pure English" - A pure English that many of us have some difficulty in understanding, have no interest in, and are getting a bit fed up with!). As for "appeal to people", I was thinking of people in general. There's nothing wrong with one individual using whatever words they like, but one individual isn't going to make much difference, especially if other people haven't the hell idea what you're talking about. Language is first and foremost about communication. Or have I missed something?

Another thing completely missing from your derivation-based pruning system is any mention of how words sound. Now for me "lunar landscape" sounds much better than "moon landscape" - probably something to do with alliteration and a balanced number of syllables. You no doubt deny yourselves such wonderful words as cacophony - doubly damned - four syllables and Greek to boot. How do you think poets choose words if not by sound?

I quite agree with you about plain English, but I imagine the Plain English Campaign would give short thrift to your "wordstrings, frith, requickening". Whatever they are, they are not plain English!

@AnWulf - " I said Gaelic, which is a broader latter day word for the Celtic tung which is broken into sundry dialects (or sunder tungs even) to inhold Brythonic Celtic tho I don't think there are any speakers of Brythonic left. ... So my bad ... Let me say it this way: I don't speak a Gaelic/Celtic tung. English is a Teutonish tung so it's a red herring to bring up the Gaelic/Celtic dwellers that were there before the Saxons."

First, Gaelic is not a broader latter day word for the Celtic tongue. Celtic languages are divided into two families - Goidelic and Brythonic. Goidelic includes Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic and Manx, Brythonic includes Welsh, Cornish and Breton, and the Celtic language spoken in England before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. But that's not the point, one which you always avoid. You are forever criticising the Normans, without ever holding the behaviour of the Anglo-Saxons to the same account. That sounds to me like double standards. But why let stupid historical objectivity get in the way of your narrative?

I wonder what happened to the claim that "An ongoing work that came to a screeching halt when Lucky Bill had a Frenchman put over the church in England" - gone off into another round of polemic. Incidentally, the Ormulum wasn't "setting the Bible into English", it was a commentary in English verse explaining the meaning of certain bible texts; something rather different from a bible translation, especially given the Church's position.

And why will you never address the point that the entry of French words into English came in two separate periods; the second from choice.

But what's the point? I really can't be arsed anymore to try and have a rational conversation with someone who holds a 900 year-old grudge, harping on about "Lucky Bill" every opportunity he gets. Someone who twists history to suit his own agenda, and accuses people who simply use normal English of holding French and Latin "in awe". Or people who use normal British spelling of paying "homage" to the French. You really do live in a world all of your own. If all this, and accusing your opponent of "whingeing", is the level of your debate, it's really not worth my time.

The Anglish thing used to worry me, as I felt my language was threatened by what I consider a very bad idea. But now I've read a bit about the "pure English" movement, I've realised my fears were completely groundless. While many if not most of the inkhorn terms you so despise are still with us, few of the "English" substitutes have survived. (I got my list from an English course at Towson University - http://pages.towson.edu/duncan/inkhorn.html). And the same with more modern coinages. The linguistic purist movement in English is about as significant to mainstream English as a Trekkie convention. But at least (most) Trekkies know they're living in a fantasy world.

And don't confuse linguistic purism with the Campaign for Plain English. They do sterling work, and have had a very positive effect on the use of English by official bodies, businesses and professionals. But their principles are based on common sense, not prejudice.

The herd is always right.

@jayles - Meaning?

Jayles is just stating a fallacy, the appeal to popularity, yet he makes another fallacy of his own, one that I call the appeal to obscurity, the fallacy that it is known by a few that it is right.

Whoops, the fallacy that if only a few people know or believe in something, then it is right.

What I meant was to do with the basis of what is okay and good and "plain" English, and what is not so good, or "unplain". It seems to me that in this discussion we need to find some common basis for our criteria, otherwise agreement is impossible.
One of the bases is "what people say/write" - which leads to corpus-based criteria. For instance "quicken" is somewhere in the 10000-15000 range of word frequency lists.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists/PG/2006/04/10001-20000
(see 12200+)
As such it is a word that native and near-native speakers would be expected to know.
Adding the prefix "re-", which is portable, doesn't alter this. I think we agree on this.
However the argument is about whether it is "plain" English, whether it enriches the language and so on; and here we seem to have more subjective criteria.
I am not arguing that shunning latinate words per se makes for "plain" or better English, (although the converse might be true); heavens above, it's really a head-banger trying to say what one wants without using latinates. However as an exercise it has stopped me automatically reaching for the standard phrases ("the herd") and made me use a thesaurus for the first time in my life.
As for "frith", well of course it is an archaic "wind-up"..
"wordstring" is about minting new words: it actually comes from software writing:
stackoverflow.com/questions/16048879/java-lang-nullpointerexception-cant-tell-why (see the first answer).
[word,string,char,text,integer,decimal are all common data types in programming]
I don't see "wordstring" as much different from "a string of words", although the latter usually means an string of excessive lengh. if we can use "multi-word verbs" for "phrasal verbs", why not word-string?
(BTW present perfect continuous is technically a "multi-word verb" so the term doesn't make things any clearer to a Mandaring speaker who doesn't have any L! tenses anyway).
@Jasper no I didn't mean that. Just that we shouldn't disallow new words just because they are new.

@WW Business English student: What means "fellow subsidiary"?
Teacher : Well.... (long explanations)
Student: Why don't you just say "sister company" like us?
Teacher: Well, ....er...

Student: Teacher! Teacher! "Multi-" what meaning?
Teacher: It means "many".
Student: Teacher! Why you not say "many", Teacher?

PS I'm eking out the pension with a little teaching again - this time an elem class (ie Chinese- Korean- Tagalog- Hindi-speakers). You may wish me luck!

@WW What bugs me sometimes is the "open-door" policy of English - yes I know this gives us lots and lots of words to choose from, but there is a flipside when it comes to non-natives learning English. For example: in Hungarian, town/ciy is "varos", "fo" is head; so the "capital" is "fovaros". It's pretty straightforward. (There many borrowings in Hungarian but quite where they came from is often a mystery, but seldom latin). Meanwhile in English we have the word "capital" (which of course comes from caput capitis a "head" in latin, although one wouldn't know that unless one had learnt latin at school). So whilst the Hungarian word is guessable from its roots the English one is not, (unless one's L1 is romance). So in the end the "open-door" policy leads to a mass of words whose root meanings are obscure. I think we as native speakers just acquire these words their usage as "blanks"; I certainly don't think of "in-fer", "de-fer", "re-fer", "of-fer", "suf-fer" and "pre-fer" as prefix+"fer" meaning to carry, (but nothing to do with "fer-al", "fer-ocious"); whereas in Hungarian and some other languages the roots would be clearer to native speaker and outside learner alike.
It is of course a bit late to change all that or to speculate what English might have been like if Harold Godwinson had fought a bit harder. What is done is done. And in some ways what a fine mongrel tongue we have. And in other ways we still have this lingering part of our culture that often tends to put latinate words in the "high" register, French in the "neutral" register, and the rest is just wot everywun says, like a reflection of the class system that operated in England when I was young.

@jayles
First and foremost language is about communication. No, we don't all have to use exactly the same words or word combinations, but if you use other words they need to be understandable. Now, for example, I still don't know exactly what you mean by "wordstring" - phrase, collocation, chunking, and now you say 'coining new words'? And as I wrote Javascript code, I'm perfectly well aware of its programming sense. You seem to think that because I know the component parts I should understand, as in your "requicken", but I don't know what you mean by that either, and I really don't see why I should spend extra effort trying to work out the meanings of words which are just as (if not more) obscure to me as long Latinates. At least I can look Latinates up in a dictionary.

I also think it doesn't show a lot of respect to your fellow speakers to use words they are not likely to understand, for what really comes down to ideological reasons. What other reasons could there be that you feel the need to invent or retool these strange words? Language is a democracy, and certain natural word partnerships have grown up, for example, I might 'quicken my pace', but 'speed up a process'. These natural associations are the basis of corpus linguistics and natural language processing.

Incidentally, "quicken" comes in at 30,926 at Wordcount.org which is based on the British National Corpus. The Wiktionary tables (which I didn't know about and will have to investigate; thanks for that) seem to be based on Project Gutenberg, so are probably a bit more 'literary', not to mention that most books at PG are out of copyright, so more than seventy years old.

http://www.wordcount.org/main.php

Talking of collocations, I have a little compromise to suggest for lunar eclipse - eclipse of the moon. It's not as common as lunar eclipse, but more so than moon eclipse. Although purists will still have the problem of 'eclipse'. Here are some figures for 'lunar eclipse', 'moon eclipse' and 'eclipse of the moon' respectively:

The Guardian - 511, 7, 58
The BBC - 556, 154 , 193
The British National Corpus - 4, 0, 2
Google Books - 145,000, 18,100, 128,000

And here are a couple of my favourite collocation finders -
http://www.netspeak.org/#query=%253F+eclipse
http://www.just-the-word.com/main.pl?word=lunar&combinations=combinations&cdb=thesaurus

Multi-word verb - OK. I hate this term. Why? Because we had a perfectly good system of phrasal verbs divided into four types, which was relatively easy (at least for teachers) to understand. What's more, dictionaries refer to phrasal verbs, there are masses of books on phrasal verbs, but the trendies seem to think that multi-word or multi-part verbs (they can't even make up their minds) are better. If they'd used different names for the four categories (as Wikipedia does), it might not have been so bad. But under the multi-whatever label, only the first two categories are now phrasal verbs, the third being prepositional verbs, and the fourth phrasal-prepositional verbs. Which is bad enough, but nobody seems totally clear as to what verbs the category prepositional verbs includes. I wrote (ranted) about this last year -
http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2011/05/when-is-phrasal-verb-not-phrasal-verb.html

I'm not sure I really get your point about present perfect continuous - do you perhaps mean it's literally a multi word verb, because it consists of several words? It certainly isn't technically a multi-word verb, as it has no particle(s).

But as for the prefix "multi-", it is so common, as are other Latin and Greek prefixes, that it shouldn't be that difficult for students to grasp the meaning once they've come across it once or twice. In any case, "many" is just as foreign for them as "multi".

I also far prefer the term "sister company", but I think you overstate the problem, as the students are likely to have learnt the term "subsidiary" well before they come across the relationship between two subsidiaries. In any case, 'sister company' is by far the more common term - 100:1 on Google, 10:1 on Bloomberg, 300:1 at the FT.

Do you really think only people who studied Latin know that "capital" comes from "head"? I would imagine most native speakers know the difference between "capital punishment" and "corporal punishment". And in any case, while knowing about roots is a fascinating subject, it's hardly necessary for understanding the meaning, is it? You rather proved that with "refer, infer" etc example.

There may be a few people who think long words sound "more intelligent", but I imagine most people judge words on their sound and familiarity, not their derivation. I really think that we have to distinguish between the desire for plain English, which I largely go along with, and language purism based on derivation, which is something completely different.

You say - "It seems to me that in this discussion we need to find some common basis for our criteria, otherwise agreement is impossible.". But there is a possible basis. It's called common sense, and using the everyday English that the vast majority of speakers use, and which sounds natural to the vast majority of native speakers. It's the language used by many (but, unfortunately, not all) the commenters at Pain in the English. You won't please the pedants or the purists, but they are tiny minorities who will never be pleased anyway.

@Warsaw Will - "While many if not most of the inkhorn terms you so despise are still with us, few of the "English" substitutes have survived." OK, I probably overstated the first part, although I stick by the second. I listed "agile" etc as Inkhorn terms, because they are listed as such at a couple of US academic sites, such as Rhode Island College and Towson University.

I accept that we are better off without many, perhaps most, of the words Thomas Wilson lists in his "An ynkehorne letter". But on the other hand, that letter also included "ingenious, capacity, mundane, celebrate, extol, dexterity, illustrate, superiority, fertile, contemplate, invigilate, pastoral, confidence, compendious, relinquish, frivolous, verbosity", only two of which "compendious" and "verbosity" would I baulk at using (in the right context).

Of those "nativist" words put forward by Ralph Lever (eg witcraft for logic, endsay for conclusion, foresay for premise), few have survived. And as Micheal Quinlon at World Wide Words says "Whatever the reason for success or failure of new words, this extraordinary period of inventiveness and adaptation enriched English with many hundreds of new terms."

Later purist writers don't seem to have been any more successful in persuading us to use their "simpler" equivalents, whether Nathaniel Fairfax (1674) - (eg bodiless for immaterial, middlekin for medium, thingsomeness for reality’) or William Barnes (starlore for astronomy and speechcraft for grammar). Although I accept that Barnes' poetry has a lot of merit, his invented words didn't really catch on.

http://www.ric.edu/faculty/rpotter/inkhorn.html
http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/403/403%20emne/inkhorn.html
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/inkhorn.htm

Inkhorn terms - for anyone interested, there is also quite a lengthy discussion in "Early Modern English", by Charles Laurence Barber, much of which is available at Google: http://books.google.pl/books?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4C&pg=PA56

this "pled" v "pleaded" v "plead" (past tense and pronounced 'pled')
thread having strayed faaaaar afield of the specific words and usages
for which I signed up, I'm outta here. Farewell.

@Justice Jim - sorry! But I think the "pled" "pleaded" thing did get pretty well discussed before we got diverted. There aren't many of these threads that go "into the grey".

@JusticeJim ... True ... It's time for WW, Jayles, and I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it.

It's time for WW, Jayles, and I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it. ?? Oh no, something wrong here, surely?
It's time for { WW, Jayles, and } I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it. ?? Take out the others ...
It's time for I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it. ?! That's what's wrong: time for I ??
It's time for me I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it.
Me, not I, after preposition 'for'. Put the others back in:
It's time for WW, Jayles, and me I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it.

Go back to the Anglish page? You must be joking! That page is the private domain of the Saxon Brotherhood, and woe betide any visitors who don't share their views. In my case, it's a case of thrice bitten, four times shy, I'm afraid.

I guess it depends on where you were raised and the language you learnt (learned) in. I was born and raised in England, therefore I learnt the "Real' English language which is pleaded. I then moved to Canada in my 30's and horror, the word "plead" (pronounced pled) came into my earshot. I guess the Americans, who "borrowed" the language 200 years ago and then screwed around with it.....and then tell everyone that anything but American English is wrong....well, they have the problem don't they? While I'm at it.....another thing that irritates the heck out of me is the American English's use of "off of" (example "take it off of the table") is a completely misused and redundant form of language. Obviously, it is "take it off the table". Anyone who learnt English as a child surely knows that!

@Limey Pat - firstly, there's nothing wrong with a bit of redundancy in spoken language. Secondly, does 'get those things off of the table' involve any more redundancy then 'get those things out of the car'. You're used to the second, so no doubt don't think about it that way, but is that 'of' really necessary there either?

Just because Americans use constructions that you and I weren't brought up with doesn't make them grammatically wrong. Just as Americans shouldn't jump to the conclusion that constructions that Brits use are wrong simply because they are unfamiliar with them.

As for the idea that 'pled' resulted from Americans 'screwing around' with 'our' language, that is just nonsense, as the Oxford English Dictionary has an example of “pled” from Edmund Spenser in 1596. What's more, as has been pointed out, it is used mainly in a legal sense, not only in North America, but also in Scotland.

@Limey Pat ... WW is spot on. BTW, "off of" isn't an Americanism. The OED finds it as far back as ME c1450.

From Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 2, Act II: Simpcox: A fall off of a tree.

And let's not forget the Rolling Stones' "Get Off Of My Cloud"!

Think of pleaded > pled as going from goeth > goes. Things change!

@WW ... Yes, I think "spot on" is more British but I did hav a British neighbor for a while so maybe I pick'd it up from him.

There are many reasons why some verbs that one might think should be strong (stem change) rather than weak (-ed).

It could be that heed, seed, and weed would sound like other word ... hed (head), sed (said), wed. Truthfully, for seed, it was a noun that became a verb so which wontedly leads to a weak verb. Need seems to also hav been a noun (neod) before becoming a verb ((ge)neodian ... shows up in Late OE).

Knead in OE was a strong verb ... past tense of "cnæd". Indeed, in some dialects it is "knodden" ... http://books.google.com.ar/books?id=GKHNBlT3wfsC&pg=PA98&dq=knodden&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lqfxUf65BoGjigKzloGgAg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=knodden&f=false

Is it he bleeded to death or he bled to death?

I agree with our original poster, Stan, that "pleaded" is sub-standard English. It grates on my nerves every time I hear it, and since my major television channels all come out of Youngstown, Ohio--a city known for its high crime rate--I get to hear "the defendent 'pleaded' not guilty" several times every day. I think this comes in part from the abandonment of the King James Version of the Bible in most churches. I'm 60 now, so when I was young, the KJV was all we had, and it was roundly praised as a model of elegant English, even if it was archaic in some of its phrasing, and took some work to understand. As we struggled with the older form, we learned elegance. Now, even our scriptures are written on a newspaper level, and we suffer for that. Even the "word of God" now sounds like something written by a journalistic hack.

I have no problem with using modern Bible versions, but I do miss the elegance that used to grace the written word. Go back and read "Gone With The Wind," "The Song of Bernadette," or "The Lord of the Rings," and you'll find vastly different usage. Sometimes it can be over-wordy, but if you keep at it, you'll be struck by the beauty. We're losing that, and "pleaded" is just one more example of how far our language has fallen.

@Rosewood11 You might wish to take a look at the "anglish" blog on this selfsame websheet, wherein, amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth, your KJV-standpoint would be most welcomely brooked.

@Rosewood11 - one small problem, 'pled' doesn't appear in the KJV, whereas 'pleaded' does, three times, two of which could be likened to the legal sense.

Blessed be the LORD, that hath pleaded the cause of my reproach - Samuel 25:3
O LORD, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; - Lamentations 3:58
Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt - Ezekiel 20:36

http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/search.php?q=pleaded&hs=1

only in Amerika.................!

I am old school, and am apalled by the pronounciation and spelling of the english language as printed in our daily newspapers.
Supposedly, reporters are university graduates and educated people, but the constant use of incorrect words and spelling makes one wonder if the degree came in a cereal packet.
A classic case is when a personwho was on bail has it extended by the court (judge or magistrate), the reporter usually writes "the bail was enlarged".
I rest my case

I hate to say it but there is no reason to hate either form. 'pleaded' is actually older. This word comes from French so was not irregular when borrowed. It came to be pronounced 'pled' in some contexts after analogy with 'read.' Now that I've said that, I want to be clear I don't advocate a particular form. Let people speak how they want. 'Pled' is fine. It is completely untrue that people read or write worse than the generation before t hem. Language and spelling naturally change over time. Since language has existed, these complaints have existed. And no, it does not mean you are smarter than young people. You are just pretentious, old or both.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/user/reset/114021941/1456408387/6XhTN7-OJdvGSG48kwUtoEotCB2P8xFywznwc1op0vE

@Sombody123

Yep, just like speed limits and taxes.

Pleaded is correct grammar, pled is what sounds more pleasing to the ear because it's been used for so long, mainly by American journalist. But in the past few years we've found it being replaced with pleaded, as the main authorities on grammar say it's the correct choice.

personally, each time i have heard "he/she pleaded guilty, it has frustrated me that they did not say pled. in my mind i have always replaced it with pled as it has always been a past tense word for me. and it shall remain so.

It is quite bizarre. I noticed this, yes about 5 years ago, as you say. What puzzled me was how it became universal in the media almost overnight. No one said "he pled guilty".
"He pleaded", as far as I am concerned has a completely different meaning, inferring that the person was in imminent danger and was asking to be spared from imminent harm.
There are two questions; how this happened and why?
My gut feeling is that there are certain websites (often American) that give advice on use of English and the solitary advisor for the site just chose pleaded as the best option for most purposes. Obviously I disagree but the younger, more easily influenced media types just fell into line.
Today though, I noticed another similar change; speeded instead of sped. Should we worry? Am I annoyed? Well, yes and yes, but clearly people like me or sites like this one don't have the influence to counter the behaviour of media types.

That is a cogent observation: pleaded is indeed more emotional (or describes a situation involving more emotion). The change in citations in the media observed and commented on by many respondents can be laid at the feet of the two big style manuals (Chicago and AP) who--for reasons of their own, one must assume--laid down the law about that time.
As some clever wag said, "He pled guilty, then pleaded with his wife to forgive him."
A reporter at a rural Oregon newspaper that carried my syndicated language column ("The Language We Use") back in the '80s raised the question then--and I feel uneasy to this day that I never addressed the issue in my column.
Life in Tropical North Queensland helps assuage any feelings of guilt, so I plead with you not to blame me.