Snuck vs Sneaked (Page 4 of 8)

This word is not appropriate here.  Let's please not use it again ... and let's not point fingers or belabor the point.

I've trawled the internet upon the origins of the word 'snuck' and the consensus is that the word originated in the U.S.A and began to emerge in written language from the 1920's onwards. There is no record of the word being invented or coined by any process or statute. It must therefore be assumed that the word 'snuck' originated colloquially (a colloquial alternative to the word 'sneaked') before becoming mainstream and adopted as a common word. It is understandable that when a young nation is formed and it comprises almost entirely of immigrants bringing so many foriegn first languages to the common language that the spoken (and written) word will change. It is a wonder that the North American variant of the English language has retained as much of the common English language that it has.

So if "snuck" is not a U.S. colloquialism, then it surely was at its point of origin and remained so until it was adopted as a common word.

I must admit I'm struggling with this one. I suppose I could simply say; 'yes but just because Canadian English evolved in some ways away from English spoken in the rest of the world does not make it the correct English. Or 'just because USA English evolved in some ways away from English spoken in the rest of the world does not make it the correct English.

As I said, I'm struggling with this one.

Surely, British/English is correct in Britain, whilst New Zealand/English is correct within New Zealand and Canadian/English... etc. Are you saying that U.S/English is correct and that any variants that have evolved away from it are invalid? 

In any case, I never said that 'snuck' is incorrect English. The simple fact is that I live in a region of the world (England) where the word sneaked is in far more common usage than the word snuck. Consequently the word snuck sounds odd or alien to my ear and for some reason it also sounds a bit dumb. I'm not completely sure why the 'dumb' association is formed or how I've been conditioned to feel that 'snuck' is a dumb word (hence trying to understand it with the Josey Wales stuff etc.), but at a subliminal level 'snuck' invokes an cliché image of a 'American hillbilly or cowboy'. I realise that might make me sound like a bigot, but I'm not making a conscious association, I simply hear 'snuck' and see 'hillbilly'. I don't think that it is my fault, that association being planted by media etc. It's just like when I hear one of those bulb-horn hooters honked, within my mind's-eye I see Harpo Marx riding an Ostrich. I don't know why, it's just engrained.

Sneaked contains more than one syllable and 'snuck' has sneaked in to replace it. Perhaps in a few years the minimalist linguists will see a superfluous redundancy in the 'c', take umbrage with it, and we will have 'snuk' as a word with anyone who is indifferent to the word, labeled a bigot.

On a visit to Chicago once, I sat in the back of an airport to hotel shuttle cab. The driver was highly stimulated and never stopped talking. He was quite comfortable in his rapport, us being two young men; boy's together. Just about every sentence he said, either started or finished (or both) with the phrase muthafucka, muthafuckin, mofucka, mofuck, mother...fucker, or a variant of the same. He must have said it a hundred times or more during the journey. It just rolled off his tongue and wouldn't stop rolling. I'm no prude and was not offended, I realise that it is just a part of this guy's language. Did I think it was odd? Yes, because I'd not heard the term used much at home, and certainly not in that manner. Yes, because I found it an odd (alien) use of English. As a result, I now associate that phrase (or those words) with that American cab driver. Does that make me a bigot? By your standards, yes it certainly does.

Wow.

Explaining that the word 'snuck' sounds dumb to me, makes me a bigot, ignorant and with "an under-powered IQ."  Whilst writing phrases like 'evoking sensations' makes me a "pretentious twat."

It seems that I really have my work cut out on the self-improvement front. IQ however, is something we are stuck with. The tools we have to work with. Luckily my lowly IQ is just about enough to enable me to know that "under-powered " is actually spelled as one word; 'underpowered.' Oh, I know that you said that typos should not be pulled-up in forums, but surely when one is claiming to possess superior intellect and does so by use of poor or illicit typography then it is worthy of a mention? (Or are you as “irony-challenged” as you accuse others on the site to be?). You can excuse me in any case, because I am indeed, as you established, a foreigner, a bigot, an obnoxious pseud and a “pretentious twat.”
Oh, and if writing the phrase, ‘evoking sensations’ compels you to judge me as a "pretentious twat," I wonder what the writer of the unpretentious words below might be thought to be?

I just wanna tell you people I sooo very impressed.

This discussion about “sneaked vs. snuck” leaded (should I use “led” instead?) by this awesome bloke with such a very, regular American name (you guessed it right! It’s Charles F. Bell!) has been sooo totally constructive. I’ve just learnt a bunch of stuff—Gosh! I need to stop using this Brit. grammar that has evolved away from the English written elsewhere in the world. LOL! It’s like I’m writing another language.

With sincere appreciation,

Helga Marianne Reuter

PS. Just in case there’s a bloke here who hasn’t bothered himself reading my bio and thus thinks my name’s American, allow me to clarify it’s not—just in case somebody might Donald-Trump a stupid comment about my name not being “a regular American name”.

My dictionary (Merriam-Webster) does not list twat. In my experience growing up, twat was a vulgar term for vagina. Hardly a definition of a fool. Twit, on the other hand, is. Twit or twat. Choose your poison.

Twat, in the UK, is an extremely common term of abuse and is slang for a vagina but used to describe a person. Exactly like the other expletive that is also slang for a vagina, that has four letters beginning with C and ending with T. Self same meaning and usage, but twat is deemed the lesser of the two in terms of offensiveness. 

It's a strange British slang thing but 'twatted' is used to describe a punch. "I twatted him," means I punched him.

Although a very common word here in the UK, like wanker and bollocks, I didn't think it was a common expletive in the U.S. I mean to say that I don't think I've heard the expression in any American media. I'm sure that is the case because I don't think that any two Brits would be pondering it's meaning meaning or usage. Twat in the UK is as common a word as Snuck in the USA.

Well, the operative word here is "written" when it was editorially suppressed within the context of the prescriptivist English movement that began in the 1870 's. "Snuck" and other words have been slowly premitted back because of the Ebonics movement - following on the fact that blacks, North and South, almost universally use the word over "sneaked"  For similar reasons, generationally propagating antebellum white Southerners have always used the word, too.  I never heard the word "sneaked" until I lived in Pittsburgh, whose natives rather perversely use older English past-tense verb-forms (wept, leapt, smelt) because of early Scots and later German inhabitants.

That is backwards history. The history is complicated by the fact that "sneaked" snuck into English in the Old Country as proper probably well into the 18th century partly we might suppose because the Great Vowel Shift mentioned before equalized many words like "leak" and "sneak" by the 17th century - but not always among the lowers classes, North and Scotland from which emigration to America was most common.

Again, the history is backwards. English changed rapidly in England (1600-1800) and not so rapidly in America (outside of New England), so American English is original English (outside of London, Essex, Sussex, etc.) in broad generalization. Canada is irrelevant. Australian and South African are stuck in a timelock ca. 1750. because of relatively low immigration in early empire.

Because England has increasingly become irrelevant since 1900 and will cease to be anything much at all before William ascends, it should be accepted that proper English comes from the U.S.A. but without American bigotry that you cannot speak and write English as you wish in your little country.

It's not that bad. A kind of watered down expletive, very much the British equivalent of the American slang use of the word pussy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqbzVLJCXNg

It's one more line crossed.  How many are left?  Shouldn't we leave a few uncrossed?

Is the word pussy that bad? How would you react if one turnip in the sack reassembled a penis. Amused or outraged?

I'm sorry that the penny hasn't dropped for you yet.  In England, the word does not have the meaning, or quite the explicit meaning, you think it has. I mischievously used the word to trap another but got you instead while the one to whom it was directed would know what I meant, should he not have been a complete pretender.

That's quite lovely.  Have you considered entering a Trump beauty contest?

Oh no.  Obama is Nero and Hillary is Drusilla, Caligula's dead sister. Poor Tump may be Galba.