Friday, September 22, 2006

Waked up again

In my gobsmacked amazement at the inaccuracy of the claim that "there is no woken up", it seems that I have misconstrued June Casagrande's intention. She wrote to tell me that the article was not in earnest and that her own feeling about the past participle of wake up is the same as mine. The fault, it seems, lies with Garner's Modern American Usage. Garner writes,
"The following are the preferred declensions:
wake > woke > waked (or woken)
awake > awoke > awaked (or awoken)
awaken > awakened > awakened
wake up > woke up > waked up
...For the past participle, AmE prefers waked; BrE prefers woken."
In his list of irregular verbs, however, he has the order reversed with "wake woke woken (or waked)".

So there it is: it's Garner who gets it wrong, athough not nearly as emphatically as all that.

June also pointed out that I was lax in my own homework. She hasn't started writing a column; the column is established. It is the book that is new. Mea culpa.

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