I’m fairly certain that the correct past tense of “shine” is “shone,” rather than “shined.” After searching online, I’ve found that some references consider “shined” to be archaic, while others seem to make no distinction between the two.
The exact sentence in question is as follows: “The sun shined upon the grass.” (I admit, it’s from a homework assignment, for my first-grader. I just think it’s wrong, and I’d like to be certain before I tell him that.)
Does anyone have a more definitive answer than what I’ve found so far?
If votes count, I’d vote to use “shone” in that sentence. Shine has a number of meanings, some of which make “shined” more appealing. But I believe the intransitive nature of “shone” as a past tense of “shine” (as of light) makes more sense to me.
I would say that it depends on which meaning of the word “shine” you’re using. For “shine” as in “emit light”, especially in a transitive sense, I would use “shone”: “The sun shone on the grass”. But for “shine” as in “polish”, I would use “shined”: “I shined my shoes yesterday”.
Take this with the caveat that I have no idea why this distinction would exist, but it just sounds right to me.
I believe you are misreading. It indicates only that pronouncing “shone” to rhyme with “John” is especially Canadian and British; this note does not apply to the pronunciation rhyming with “bone”.
FWIW, the Oxford English Dictionary records the past participle "shined’ as “U.S., dial. and arch.”. It also records a transitive form of the verb meaning “to cause to shine, to put a polish upon” which is “orig. U.S.”, and notes that this form of the verb is always infllected “shined”.
In other words, when we’re talking about shoes the word is always “shined”; the sense of the word which refers to polishing shoes originated in the US but is now found elsewhere. In other senses the dominant past participle is “shone”, but “shined” is sometimes found, mainly in US English, in some other dialects, and in archaic contexts.
The only pronunciation of “shone” that the OED recognises is the one that rhymes with “gone”.
Yeah, the OED isn’t generally too concerned with maintaining comprehensive American pronunciation information; e.g., the only pronunciation of “harass” it recognizes is the one which rhymes with “Paris”, rather than the one that sounds like “her ass”.
I say “shone”, but it rhymes with “bone”. You really pronounce it as rhyming with “fawn” (which rhymes with “gone” for me)? Or do you have a different pronunciation of “gone”?
Yep. I’m a Californian, so “fawn” and “gone” (and “shone” and “Sean”) are perfect rhymes for me, but my mother is Canadian, which might explain why I have an aberrant usage / pronunciation for my dialect. And I do say “shined” for “polished.”
Exactly. I’m not offering the OED as some kind of infallible authority before which all others must bow, but simply as one more contribution to the overall picture. What the OED has suggests that the rhymes-with-bone pronunciation is a US variant, and is not found elsewhere. As a matter of fact, it had never occurred to me that anyone might use that pronunciation until I read this thread.
Is that “sun” example transitive? “The sun shone” would be a sentence and the verb is unmistakably intransitive - I don’t believe adding an indirect object makes it transitive. Otherwise, I agree 100%.
Yeah, I think Chronos meant intransitive. Some languages always distinguish between transitive and intransitive forms of a verb. English usually doesn’t, but this is an exception. Although maybe some people would say “I shone my shoes”?
