People are hanged, clothes are hung. Fuck. How hard is that to grasp? Fuckity fuckity fuckity fuck. And while we’re on the topic, it’s sneaked, not snuck. Fucking morons. Oh yeh, and dragged, not drug. Fuck.
…and its “lend me your lawnmower”, not “borrow me your lawnmower” --f’ing knuckle dragging dolt.
I’d like to take this opportunity to announce that I am hanged like a black man.
By guys wearing white sheets? 
[Blazing Saddles] Bart! Bart! They told us you was hung!
And they was right. [/Blazing Saddles]
Despite the compelling repetition of the word “fuck”, I’m not convinced. Why are people not hung? If I hang you by your back collar from a coat hook, are you hung then?
Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!
THANK YOU!!!
That “hanged/hung” thing drives me quietly berserk every time. People who use “hung” for “hanged” should be hanged by the neck until dead, dead, dead.
This seems like a pretty trivial thing to have such a hang up over.
For me, it’s definitely “snuck”, not “sneaked”. Your usage may vary.
Echoing begbert2, it seems perfectly logical to use the same word “hung” in both cases. Apparently, for many people, that is the natural way to speak, as evidenced by your frequently having come across (and been annoyed by) such speech. Your assertions about what “it is” therefore do not seem to accurately describe the situation.
Prescriptivism is odd; sometimes, it’s all about adherence to tradition (“use
‘sneaked’, not ‘snuck’”), and sometimes, it’s bullheadedly not (“do not use ‘hanged’ and ‘hung’ interchangeably, or even one form exclusively”). There’s no real rhyme or reason to any of it.
ETA: I didn’t notice Dr. Drake’s post below me when I added the above paragraph, but it fits well.
…especially since there’s no historical justification for it. The distinction was an attempt to reconcile two competing paradigms, hang / hung / hung and hang / hanged / hanged. A lot of verbs in English have shifted from weak to strong or strong to weak. Compared American dive / dove / dived with British dive / dived / dived.
My father is convinced that “sit” and “set” have the same distinction as hanged / hung — people sit, while objects “set” (as in “the book sets on the table”).
That thing you’re standing behind? It’s not the podium. The podium is the thing you’re standing ON. The thing you’re standing behind is the lectern.
Drives me frickin’ nuts.
Just because you can’t be arsed to speak English correctly does not negate the reality of what is and is not correct.
As for “sneaked” vs “snuck” – as “snuck” is an idiot-yet-accepted by the dictionary past tense, feel free to sound stupid to my ears every time you use it. Do not expect me to think your IQ is above that of a retarded hammer, though.
bannerrefugee – hee hee. Thanks for the giggle.
Interesting. Definition #2 of the American Heritage Dictionary for “podium” is “A stand for holding the notes of a public speaker; a lectern”. Similarly with Merriam-Webster. (Other dictionaries following similarly…)
Well, do what you want, if you’re so committed to making unjustified inferences; the best I can point out is that stubborn adherence to such an inference would give markedly inaccurate conclusions about the general population of “snuck”-users. But I doubt you actually think my IQ fails to be above that of a retarded hammer.
The way I read it, the dictionary you linked to says they can be used interchangeably, but that the always-legal alternative “hanged” is ‘especially’ common for the “killed by rope around neck” sense (despite ‘hung’ also being legal).
Hmm, I wonder how much reading comprehension skill a retarded hammer has?
That’s hardly authoritative, and the reality of what is and is not correct in English is ambiguous at best. Ten out of 10 for smugness, though. I bet you’re a blast at dinner parties.
“Hung” and “hanged”; either is correct as the past tense of “hang”. You’re getting upset about nothing.
He is – I peaked.
This has bothered me for most of my dais.
Allow me to introduce some fucking morons, courtesy of Merriam-Webster 's Dictionary of English Usage:
“for these rogues that burned this house to be hung, in some conspicuous place in town.” – Samuel Pepys
“should not escape unpunished. I hope he hung himself.” – Jane Austen
“These men were…at last brought to the scaffold and hung.” --Percy Bysshe Shelley
“I have not the least objection to a rogue being hung.” – W. M. Thackeray
“The negro murderer was to be hung on a Saturday without pomp.” – William Faulkner
“a thirteen-year-old evangelist, who hung himself because his mother spanked him for sassing her.” – Flannery O’Connor
Now, I personally find the distinction between ‘hung’ and ‘hanged’ to be a useful (and an elegant) one, and I observe it in my own speech and writing on the rare occasions when the opportunity presents itself. But I’ve learned (with the help of Language Log and the aforementioned MWDEU) to forswear the seductive self-righteous pleasure that accompanies linguistic prescriptivism in favor of the intellectual pleasure of discovering the reality of language use.
Incidentally, in case you’re curious, according to MWDEU, ‘snuck’ started showing up in published writings at least as early as 1887, has been used by Ring Lardner, and has appeared in straightforward use in the pages of the NY Herald Tribune Book Review, the LA Examiner, the New Yorker, and the Wall Street Journal, to name a few. You may not like it, but with 130 years of use, ‘snuck’ looks to be here to stay.