[Ads-l] Facebookery: "Sally refuses to be _gaslit_."

[Yagoda, Ben]

I wonder if the writers pointedly had Duke use the irregular form. According the Wikipedia, “[Ronnie] Schell played his Duke Slater character as streetwise, compared to Pyle's bucolic background.” Is “gaslit” more streetwise than “gaslighted”?

> On Jan 12, 2017, at 10:47 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Facebookery: "Sally refuses to be _gaslit_."
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> In a post yesterday I shared a 1965 episode of "Gomer Pyle: USMC" that (for
> now) counts as the earliest verifiable use of the verb "gaslight," and
> there they use "gaslit," not "gaslighted."
> 
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2017-January/145895.html
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnKkE0nrZx4 at 17:35
> Duke: Oh, he was gaslit all right. If anyone was gaslit it was him.
> 
> It's remarkable that "gaslighting" was considered common enough knowledge
> by then that it didn't require an explanation tying it back to the movie,
> and it's equally remarkable that the verb had already taken on the
> irregular morphology of "gaslit" for the past tense / past participle.
> 
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 8:15 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I prefer _gaslighted_, but...
>> 
>> Youneverknow.
>> 
>> I grew up in the home of the Laclede Gas-Light Company, so...
>> 
>> 
> 
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