Participial "slow + -n"

[Charles C Doyle]

During a UFC cage-fighting bout last night (yes, I sometimes watch that!), the excited ring-side (or octagon-side) announcer remarked that one of the combatants "has slown down considerably."  Perhaps the speaker stumbled into an inadvertent analogy with "show" or the like--or else an archaic form bubbled to the surface structure.

The phrase "slown down" garners some 40,000 Google hits, many of them obvious typos--but some not, including this tiny item in UrbanDictionary.com (s.v. "slown"):  "a word used to describe the act of slowing down. I guess it is a Texas thing."

--Charlie

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