"drug" and irregulation

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Nov 12, 2010, at 5:43 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "drug" and irregulation
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>
> At 11/12/2010 02:34 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>  Here Bush seems to be drugging in the irregular.
>>
>> Why?  "Drug" as a strong past tense (or participle) of "drag" has
>> been around a lot longer than either Bush.  I'd think this is just
>> standard (or standard non-standard) Texas usage GWB picked up, not a
>> case of a regular verb becoming irregular.  (Cf. snuck, clumb,...)  I
>> have it, at least passively, in at least one context:  "Look what the
>> cat drug in."
>
> I guess I'm just too non-Texan ... and I should have researched
> "drug" before suggesting it was new, or the trend.  Apologies.  (But
> I was interested to hear that the regular to irregular flow exists
> also -- I didn't know that

E. Bagby Atwood's _A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States_ (1953) had it widely distributed in the region, especially in the Middle Atlantic states, especially in people classified as having "poor" or "fair" education. DARE would have a more recent story.

arnold

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