Snuck

[Dr. Goodword]

• snuck •

Pronunciation: snêk • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Verb, past tense, past participle?

Meaning: Moved in a stealthy, quiet manner so as not to attract attention, slinked (slunk?).

Notes: One of the standard assumptions of linguistics is that irregular forms tend to become regular. So, what once was dive : dove is becoming dive : dived, hang : hung is becoming hang : hanged, while help : holp, which my grandmother used regularly, has long since changed to help : helped. (For more on language change, read Dr. Goodword's article on the Reference Shelf.)

In Play: Contrary to this assumption, however, new irregular forms appear and occasionally stick in the language. Irregular past tenses like kilt (kill), thunk (think), brang (bring) are treated as jokes. Yet the past participle in "I am broke" cannot be replaced by broken nor the one in "I am beat (tired)", by beaten. The same is not quite true of snuck: sneaked is still available. But according to the American Heritage Dictionary, "Snuck was almost 20 percent more common in newspaper articles published in 1995 than it was in 1985." So, the use of snuck has grown tremendously since its introduction in the 19th century and now most US dictionaries accept it as a legitimate option.

Word History: Today's (more or less) Good Word reflects a usage limited to the US, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The basic form, sneak, seems to be an English original that descended from Old English snícan, possibly borrowed from Old Norse sníkja, which is snike in Modern Norwegian. The root is clearly related to snake and, probably, to snail. Beyond this, little is known about its history.

[damoge]

Oh, please, no.

Soooooo ugly.
Soooooo unnecessary.

[call_copse]

Pretty sure sneaked would be more common in the UK, but snuck could have gained credence I guess, like the awful shrunk as the past tense of shrink.

[damoge]

I'd tell you I'd like to move to the UK to get away from the way English is spoken here, but ...
Aside from the all too obvious parallels of decline in politics and politeness in our two homelands, there is, for example, the problem of substituting F for TH that has become popular (pardon the pun) over the last 25 or 30 years or so there.
I often admit, with great sadness, that the US exports EVERYTHING, and these (above) are prime examples. What I seldom suggest is that the rest of the world boycott us.

Please indulge me while I say:
Please, World, be more judicious!
P.S. Would still like to be there more often than of late.

[Philip Hudson]

Never be sneaky and you won't have to choose between sneaked and snuck as a past tense. I abhor the word in all its tenses. The whole thing makes me tense.