# Is it now acceptable to use "hung" instead of "hanged" in the sense of execution?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-now-acceptable-to-use-hung-instead-of-hanged-in-the-sense-of-execution/679235>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 20, 2014, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-now-acceptable-to-use-hung-instead-of-hanged-in-the-sense-of-execution/679235 "2014-01-20T00:25:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2014, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-now-acceptable-to-use-hung-instead-of-hanged-in-the-sense-of-execution/679235/81 "2014-02-13T04:11:55Z")

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> [@geezer1](#):
>
> Acceptable ? ?
> 
> By whom ? ?
> 
> Who died and made some dilettante our word God ? ?
> 
> The idea of words is to communicate, not to do so in a manner that is “acceptable” . . .
> 
> If a person was to say “I ain’t not never no way going to do that there thing no more again”, I would agree that perhaps his delivery could use a bit of tweaking, but he DID get the idea across, in other words, he _ **communicated** _, which was his initial and sole intent . . .

In your example the speaker does get his point across, but there are times when variances in spelling, grammar, and pronunciation strain the limits of mutual intelligibility. In another forum I belong to, the topic of urban sprawl came up, and this typically leads to related issues such as urban planning and transit infrastructure, and the history of both those things. So one poster mentioned “tracks everywhere” …and I was thinking, “Tracks”? Like mass transit lines? No, he meant housing _tracts_. I do understand that both words sound exactly the same to this person, and, moreover, that the simplification of consonant clusters is very common in the evolution of languages; be that as it may, the writer of that post could have thrown us a bone and said “housing tracks”, at least.

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**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2014, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-now-acceptable-to-use-hung-instead-of-hanged-in-the-sense-of-execution/679235/82 "2014-02-14T23:50:49Z")

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Tommy Smothers sang:

_Hang down your head Tom Crudely,  
Hang down your head and cry, hahaha  
Hang down your head Tom Hungly;  
Oh boy,… you’re hung! 😃_

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