stealed

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 14, 2011, at 10:28 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> A guest commentator on NPR just said thats omebody's complaining that Google
> has "stealed their search engine."
>
> This is the second time in recent weeks that I've heard someone with a
> college degree say "stealed" for "stolen" or perhaps even "stole."
>
> I'm pretty sure it wasn't the same guy. Be that as it may, neither had a
> foreign (of course I mean "international") accent.
>
> Memories decay, but I can't claim that I saw "stealed" more than once or
> twice in twenty-five years of university teaching. And I never heard anyone
> say it.
>
Maybe it's from people hearing and misinterpreting "He steeled himself for the verdict" and such?  (Only half-joking.)  But I guess paradigm regularization has to start with someone and maybe these folks are saying, as in the folksong, "Let it begin with me" (although the reference there was to peace on earth rather than paradigm leveling).

LH

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