Mark, half a wit is better than none. Mike is correct, but only as far as the spoken word is concerned. The written form should, by the rules of Standard English, be 'texted'.

But Merriam-Webster, by their own account, only studies the written usage:

"Each day most Merriam-Webster editors devote an hour or two to reading a cross section of published material, including books, newspapers, magazines, and electronic publications; in our office this activity is called 'reading and marking'."

They call it 'reading'. What a clever bunch. No mention of listening, though.

The word 'texted' is new and its pronunciation is still up for grabs. I have heard it both ways – as 'texted' and as 'text'. Consider the verb 'to fax': its past tense is spelled 'faxed', yet nearly everyone says 'faxt'. I'm not advocating one pronunciation of 'texted' over another; perhaps one will win out or perhaps we are stuck with both. But the use of one or the other is not laziness, as Paulina suggests, nor dim-wittedness, as you do. It is merely preference.

The pronounciation of ‘aunt’ as ‘ant’ or ‘ahnt’ is not a function of accent. We can see from the comments posted here that there are regional, cultural, and even ethnic factors involved. Each version may be accented, but the distinct underlying phonemes remain recognizable.

The fact that there are two pronunciations of the word may be traced back to the “Great Vowel Shift” of Middle English. During this change ‘a’ as in ‘fame’ would become ‘a’ as in ‘farm.’ The shift was not universal; it was primarily a southern phenomenon in medieval England – the very region that would later provide the basis for Standard English. Thus ‘ant’ would have become ‘ahnt,’ but not in all parts of England.

Both pronunciations later entered American English in different places and at different times, according to the patterns of immigration. The persistence of the two forms probably has much to do with the word’s intimate tie to family. Nobody has both an ‘ant’ and a ‘great-ahnt.’

Most dictionaries I have consulted list 'friendly' as a noun, an adjective, and an adverb. It is not listed as a noun in my older Merriam-Webster. The noun usage I suspect is most recent, as in: "The explorers encountered a friendly, whom they engaged as their guide." It has the distinct ring of slang, and old slang at that. It is rarely heard anymore outside of bad movie dialog.

It is even more uncommon to find 'friendly' used as an adverb. A sentence like "They treated her friendly" sounds odd, even colloquial. It is not incorrect, but it will catch the reader's or listener's attention, and needs to be explained by, or supported by, its context. Such usage should be reserved for written dialog or for the spoken word.

Nor would I advise "amicably" as a substitute adverb. To say "The diplomatic meeting ended amicably" may be taken to mean a lack of dispute, rather than any feeling of warmth between the participants. Stick to 'friendly' as an adjective, as in "friendly advice."

An episode of 'Flight of the Conchords' juxtaposes two possible past tense forms of the verb 'text' in a dialog between a New yorker and one of the New Zealand band's members. The New Yorker says "he had known for two days before he text me" while the New Zealander says "he texted me" later in the conversation (though in his accent it sounded more like 'tikst?d'). To be honest, neither seemed right, but 'text' sounded more natural.

In a letter to a book dealer, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "In giving loose to Neologisms, indeed, uncouth words will sometimes be offered, but the public will judge them, and receive or reject, as sense or sound shall suggest..." He is right. If text survives as a verb – and I suspect it will – grammarians and style-book writers will have to bow to usage.

‘Obligate’ is not an Americanism, nor is it a recent coinage or an unnecessary variant of ‘oblige.’ Merriam-Webster gives the derivation of ‘obligate’ as:

Latin ‘obligatus,’ past participle of ‘obligare’

The etymology of ‘oblige’ is given as:

Middle English, from Anglo-French ‘obliger,’ from Latin ‘obligare,’

M-W dates ‘obligate’ to 1533, ‘oblige’ to the 14th century. For you history buffs, that’s well before the English language arrived in the New World. (Interestingly, M-W dates ‘obligated’ and 'obligation' to the 14th century, which means that ‘obligate’ must also be that old.)

Both are (primarily) transitive verbs, and while they can be used interchangeably in some cases, their definitions are somewhat different:

Obligate:

1: to bind legally or morally
2: to commit (as funds) to meet an obligation

Oblige:

1: to constrain by physical, moral, or legal force or by the exigencies of circumstance

2: A: to put in one's debt by a favor or service B : to do a favor for

I suspect that the 'obligate,' coming as it does from Latin, was introduced as a legal term–a more narrowly defined term than ‘oblige.’

Name (supplied), that is a very informative link. Here is another with the etymologies of each meaning of 'stamina' together:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=stamen&searchmode=none

I think 'stamina' could be the poster-child for the etymological fallacy.

(As for you, Kevin E, I refer you to hot4teacher's recent foray into Old English.)

Name (supplied),

For one so admittedly fond of the sarcastic you are surprisingly blind to the sardonic.

goofy:

I think we are in agreement: I favor anglicized plurals of borrowed nouns with the exception of long-established usages or specialized domains of discourse.

hot4teacher:

I sense from your remarks that you misunderstand the concept of the “etymological fallacy.”

In any event, simply citing an example–stamina–does not an argument make. Moreover, to advocate for ‘stamina’ as a plural for ‘stamen’ undermines the case for keeping to Latin plurals, since it can be easily confused with the same word in the sense of ‘endurance.’ I notice that Merriam-Webster lists ‘stamens’ as the preferred plural as early as 1947, and labels the plural form ‘stamina’ as “now rare.”

You have also missed the point of my second comment, which is that Franklin lost this particular battle with progress.

In ‘The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics,’ P. H. Matthews defines the etymological fallacy as “The notion that the ‘true’ meaning of a word is the one to be expected from its etymology.” I don’t see how this can be used as an argument on either side of this pluralization debate. No convincing case has been made here.

As for “preserving” English, people wiser than we have objected to the evolution of English usage. In 1789 Benjamin Franklin wrote to Noah Webster complaining about the then-recent formation of verbs from the substantive words ‘notice,’ advocate’ and ‘progress.’ He urged Webster: “If you should happen to be of my opinion with respect to these innovations you will use your authority in reprobating them.” (Imagine: Ben Franklin opposing innovation!) I don’t know what Webster’s response was, but all three verbs are still with us, and the language is better for it.