"be hit-and-run"

[LanDi Liu]

I would tend more toward thinking of it as turning the noun
"hit-and-run" into a verb.  Hit and run over is quite different from
"hit and run".

I guess it's coincidental that both verbs have the same forms for
their present and past participles, so it's easy to turn this
construction into a passive verb construction.  It's also interesting
that the words went from being verbs to being part of a noun, to being
a verb again.

"Hit and ran" is also fairly well attested with 209,000 raw google hits.

Randy

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 6:04 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky
<zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> plenty of examples of "was hit and run over", which is entirely
> standard, of course, and may have contributed to the usage.
>
> arnold
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org