Participial "slow + -n"
William Salmon
wsalmon1 at INTERCHANGE.UBC.CA
Thu Mar 31 15:07:57 UTC 2011
> 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."
I'm from Texas, and that usage sounds pretty normal to me :-)
WS
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