[antedating] "snuck" 1881

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thanks for this reference, Stephen.  I've been looking for the forms _snuk_ and *_snook_ without any significant result.

  JL

Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Stephen Goranson
Subject: Re: [antedating] "snuck" 1881
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Perhaps you'll find Anatoly Liberman's blog of interest:

http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/snuck/

By the way, would anyone care to comment on the--perhaps related--web
entity on
youtube, hotforwords?

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson


Quoting Amy West :

> "Snuck" was recently discussed in the office shared by the adjunct
> instructors: one spotted it in a student's paper, asked about it, and
> I directed her to a dictionary (ta-da!) (MW C10) where the form was
> listed and there was a nice little usage note about it. She treated
> it as a "marked"/"disapproved"/"informal" form.
>
> What I wonder about it is what strong verb pattern (ablaut) is it
> being modeled on?
>
> ---Amy West
>
>> Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 09:19:13 -0800
>> From: Jonathan Lighter
>> Subject: [antedating] "snuck" 1881
>>
>> I was caught yesterday in the middle of one of those tedious
>> discussions about whether "snuck" is a "real word." I affirmed that
>> it was, at least in the good ol' U.S. of A. When
>> that didn't work I tried sarcasm: "If it isn't a word, what is
>> it?" This was met by knowing nods on the one side and looks of
>> disbelief and pity on the other. Clearly _argumentum ad
>> authoritatem_ does not work in such cases.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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