A native Texan says his Canadian wife teases him about his use of hitten for a past participle, as in You have hitten every green light instead of You have hit every green light. Charles Mackay’s 1888 work, A Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, does include the word hitten, describing it as a preterite and past participle of hit that “survives in the colloquial language of the peasantry.” Mackey also includes hitten in his 1874 book Lost Beauties of the English Language. Hitten follows a pattern similar to those of gotten, written, driven, and bitten. Similarly, some people will use the variant store-boughten rather than store-bought. Other irregular past participle forms used colloquially include squoze for squeezed, catched for caught, and growed for grown. This is part of a complete episode.
What makes a great first line of a book? How do the best authors put together an initial sentence that draws you in and makes you want to read more? We’re talking about the openings of such novels as George Orwell’s 1984...
To slip someone a mickey means to doctor a drink and give it to an unwitting recipient. The phrase goes back to Mickey Finn of the Lone Star Saloon in Chicago, who in the late 19th century was notorious for drugging certain customers and relieving...
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