An opera singer from Ontario, Canada, just finished a run of La Faniculla del West with the Virginia Opera. His character is put to death by hanging. Is it correct to say his character was hanged? Or was his character hung? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Is there a Difference Between Hanged and Hung?”
Hi. Hi. This is Martha. This is Martha. Who’s this? Hi, Martha. It’s Roger Honeywell calling from Stratford, Ontario, Canada.
Hi, Roger. Welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks. What’s going on, Roger?
So here’s my question. I’m an opera singer, and I recently finished a production of La Fanchula del West at the Virginia Opera. And in this opera, I play a character named Dick Johnson, who is a bandit, and he’s caught out by a gang of miners, and the miners are about to hang him.
I guess my question to you is, while we were in rehearsal, I was always wondering if I’m to be hung or I’m to be hanged, and I’d like to know the difference.
Oh, it’s a good thing.
That’s a good question.
What are your instincts telling you?
What is your inner language heart saying to you?
I think the correct one is hanged, but it sounds better to be hung.
Yeah, no pun intended, but yes.
Yeah, they’re both kind of awful options, though.
Right.
Well, listen, my next opera, I’m going to be eaten by a whale.
So I think I’d rather be hanged.
So which part are you playing then?
Captain Ahab.
Yeah, okay, wonderful.
Okay, well, you have a wonderful life.
No, it usually ends pretty badly on stage for me.
I’m either hanged or hung or eaten by whales.
At least rigs aren’t falling down on your head.
This is true. Exactly.
So the division is really clear on hanged and hung, and it’s almost universally agreed upon by usage experts and dictionaries and style guides.
Hanged is used for people who die by hanging, and all other uses are hung.
Okay.
Yeah. So that’s the clear-cut line there.
And the reason it’s so is because hanged is the much older form, and then somewhere along the way, before the language was fully kind of came anywhere near standardization and before they started thinking about regularizing it across all the different dialects, HANG had a variety of past tense and past participle uses, and people thought it should conform to words like SING, SANG, SUNG and make it kind of behave the same way.
But that’s just they added that on afterward and kind of shoehorned it into that kind of shape, and it didn’t really ever stick.
But the hanged use, because we as humans have been hanging people for a very long time, hanged, hung around and continued to exist and came specialized just for that particular use to put somebody to death by hanging.
They have been hanged.
Okay.
Very good.
But a picture is hung.
Okay.
True.
Right.
A picture isn’t hanged.
You can be terribly hung over.
You can’t be terribly hanged over.
That’s right.
Yeah, yeah.
Curtains are hung.
What else is hung?
Banners are hung.
Stockings by the fireplace.
That’s right.
Stockings are hung.
Okay.
Well, thanks for clearing that up.
Now I can have some authority next time I do La Fanchula del West.
Yeah.
Roger, really appreciate the call.
Call us again sometime, all right?
Give us the story of the stage.
Thanks so much.
Really appreciate it.
All right.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye, Roger.
Bye-bye now.
