# "Used to"= past tense **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 4, 2006, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132 "2006-07-04T03:57:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/41 "2006-07-07T00:54:42Z")
[QUOTE=Frylock] This is what I would have thought it was–sort of a single word “useta.” How could this hypothesis be confirmed or disconfirmed? -Kris [/QUOTE] It could be “disconfirmed” by examining my previous post, and noting what I said: there is no tensed verb in the sentence besides “used”, which means that, linguistically, it is exactly what it appears: a verb carrying tense. Were it an adverb, as in **galt** ’s rather puzzling comparison, “skydive” would carry tense and person inflection. But with “used to”, it simply cannot. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/42 "2006-07-07T01:14:31Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] It could be “disconfirmed” by examining my previous post, and noting what I said: there is no tensed verb in the sentence besides “used”, which means that, linguistically, it is exactly what it appears: a verb carrying tense. Were it an adverb, as in **galt** ’s rather puzzling comparison, “skydive” would carry tense and person inflection. But with “used to”, it simply cannot. [/QUOTE] I think galt was suggesting “used to” works similarly to “will”–as a marker of inflection. In that case, in “used to drive,” the tensed verb (anyway, the inflected verb) would be “drive” and the tense (anyway, inflection) would be marked by the word(s) “used to.” -Kris ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/43 "2006-07-07T01:36:23Z")
[QUOTE=Frylock] I think galt was suggesting “used to” works similarly to “will”–as a marker of inflection. In that case, in “used to drive,” the tensed verb (anyway, the inflected verb) would be “drive” and the tense (anyway, inflection) would be marked by the word(s) “used to.” -Kris [/QUOTE] _Will_ is yet another one of those modal auxiliaries. Haven’t I been suggesting that _used to_ has some properties at least of an auxiliary verb all along? I certainly didn’t mean to argue against that. I was rather confused by **galt** ’s use of an adverb in order to draw a comparison, and his puzzling statement that he didn’t think _used_ was a verb in that sentence. A modal, like _will_, is a type of verb. **galt** ’s comparison to _once_ was a bad comparison, as _once_ is an adverb, and the two sentences are not remotely parallel (since, once again, _once_ still has to be accompanied by a tensed verb, while a modal like _will_ can’t be; _used to_ is never followed by a tensed verb.) The analysis you’re proposing, which treats _used to_ as a single lexical item and a modal auxiliary verb, is different than what **galt** suggested a few posts back. I don’t find it convincing, because _used to_ doesn’t behave like an auxiliary verb when negated or used in a question. As far as I can remember, those are essentially the tests for auxiliary verbs, which means that “used to” - in standard English - probably isn’t really an auxiliary. “Auxiliary” is an extremely difficult word to type. ---
**Author:** ![galt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@galt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galt)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/44 "2006-07-07T05:08:56Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] It could be “disconfirmed” by examining my previous post, and noting what I said: there is no tensed verb in the sentence besides “used”, which means that, linguistically, it is exactly what it appears: a verb carrying tense. [/QUOTE] There’s no need to be rude. You didn’t actually **say that** in your previous post. But now that you have, I see your point. Relax a little. You’re talking to someone obviously less versed in this than you, and it won’t hurt you to field a few misinformed questions without acting like I’m personally insulting you with my wretched ignorance. That said: Based on your argument, it seems like you would deem it proper to say “I will use to skydive.” Is it? ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/45 "2006-07-07T06:07:43Z")
[QUOTE=galt] There’s no need to be rude. You didn’t actually **say that** in your previous post. But now that you have, I see your point. Relax a little. You’re talking to someone obviously less versed in this than you, and it won’t hurt you to field a few misinformed questions without acting like I’m personally insulting you with my wretched ignorance. [/quote] I don’t find your ignorance wretched by any stretch, and on rereading, I agree that I wasn’t clear. I’m sorry for not communicating it better. > [@](#): > > That said: Based on your argument, it seems like you would deem it proper to say “I will use to skydive.” Is it? No, of course not. The only way to figure out what’s “proper” and what isn’t is to examine usage. I’m quite confident in saying that standard American English, at least, does not permit this combination (though given what **Cat Jones** said earlier, I wouldn’t even want to guess what other dialects permit with it, since clearly usage of _used_ varies enormously.) In fact, I can’t find any uses that seem grammatical to me involving “used to” and any modal auxiliary - though I’m not sure I remembered all of the modals, so I’m not certain that there isn’t some sort of exception. Which is yet another bit of evidence that it does behave something like a modal verb. Your example with _will_ is a particularly good one, because there’s no semantic reason why it shouldn’t work - that is, the sentence works perfectly well (as far as I can see) in terms of meaning, so we can be pretty sure that the problem is a syntactic one. But, in contrast with modal verbs, you can’t invert _used_ and the subject of the sentence in forming a question. Take _Maria can speak several languages._ To form a question, modals (and other auxiliaries) switch places with the subject: _Can Maria speak several languages?_ It’s called SAI (Subject-Auxiliary Inversion). You can’t do that with _used to_. _Maria used to throw the best parties._ Attempting SAI yields something like \*_Used Maria to throw the best parties?_ or \*_Used to Maria throw the best parties?_ (Asterisks are used to mark ungrammatical constructions.) Instead, you have to add the dummy auxiliary _do_, as you have to with normal verbs: _Did Maria used to throw the best parties?_ Same goes with negation. The difference between auxiliaries (both modal and non-modal) and regular verbs is that auxiliaries can have the negative particle ‘_not_’ directly attached, following the auxiliary, whereas with a normal verb you again have to use the dummy auxiliary _do_. Take the following: _Maria can solve differential equations._ To form a negative sentence, you simply add _not_ after the modal: _Maria cannot solve differential equations._ Whereas if you don’t have an auxiliary verb, you add the dummy. _Maria solves differential equations in her sleep_ works great, but \*_Maria solves not differential equations in her sleep_ is not used in Modern English (though it’s familiar, as this used to be the way negation worked.) Instead you have to say _Maria does not [or doesn’t] solve differential equations in her sleep._ So let’s try it with used to: _Maria used to wake up at five every morning to practice the theremin._ \*_Maria used not to wake up at five every morning to practice the theremin_ doesn’t work at all. Whereas ?_Maria used to not wake up at five every morning to practice the theremin_ is somewhat acceptable to me, but intuitively I think that _not_ is paired with the infinitive - the scope of the negation in that sentence doesn’t actually affect _used to_ but rather _wake up_. It feels more like the also marginal sentence ?_Maria wants to not go to the party_, in which _not_ is paired with the verb _go_. (Both of those are pretty questionable sentences, but they are things that people say, particularly in informal usage. The difference in meaning between _doesn’t want to do something_ and _wants to not do something_ is subtle but I think there is one.) So in my dialect, I form the negative with _do_: _Maria didn’t use to wake up at five every morning to practice the theremin_. This is common, though clearly some speakers consider it a bit less grammatically acceptable. The test with forming a question using SAI is quite clear, and it tells us that _used to_ is not really an auxiliary verb at all. The test with negation is a bit murkier - and I think the fact that some speakers find _didn’t use to_ somewhat unacceptable is indeed evidence that _used to_ has at least some modal auxiliary-like qualities (remember that in standard English only one modal auxiliary can be used in a sentence). Your point that it doesn’t normally appear with other modal auxiliaries suggests the same thing. A point against it is that auxiliaries ordinarily have particular negative inflectional forms and normal verbs do not (_won’t_, _shouldn’t_, _hasn’t_, and so forth. Those forms are usually called “contractions” in English classes - and that is indeed their origin - but there are solid linguistic reasons to treat them as having evolved into special inflectional forms.) _Used to_ doesn’t have one (though again, it apparently does in Irish English: _usedn’t_.) At any rate, everything I’ve read uses negation and SAI as the tests for modal auxiliary verbs. Those are particularly important tests because they can tease out a verb’s syntactic properties, and syntactic theory therefore treats auxiliaries quite differently than other verbs as a result. In fact, “modal auxiliary verb” is properly defined as a class of verbs that have those particular syntactic properties. Those syntactic tests suggest that it’s not a modal auxiliary in standard American English. Clearly it is in some dialects, though. And it’s easily conceivable that it might one day become one in SAE. But while it appears to lurk somewhere around the border between modal auxiliary and ordinary verb, it’s still somewhere on the ordinary verb side at present. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/46 "2006-07-07T10:35:47Z")
> [@](#): > > **Frylock** : In many dialects, you can say something like “I used to could do that.” \ > [@](#): > > “Used to” is also used in some dialects as, I don’t remember the terminology but, something like an “introductory particle,” like “however” or “hopefully.” “Used to, we went to the store every day.” I grew up in rural West Tennessee and am familiar with both of these usages. I slip in and out of this dialect depending on the occasion. As I age, I tend to return to the language of my childhood. Used to, I talked this way all the time. Then when I started teaching, I used to could talk all day in front of my class without slipping up and being so informal. It’s not that the usage was incorrect; it was just more casual than I chose to use in that setting. Until I read your comment on _used to_ at the beginning of a sentence, I was actually oblivious to the uniqueness of that usage. It took your pointing it out. It was just something that I did naturally. Someone else might begin with “When I was a kid” or “Long ago” or “Years ago.” Very interesting thread. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/47 "2006-07-07T13:03:55Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] You can’t do that with _used to_. _Maria used to throw the best parties._ Attempting SAI yields something like \*_Used Maria to throw the best parties?_ or \*_Used to Maria throw the best parties?_ (Asterisks are used to mark ungrammatical constructions.) Instead, you have to add the dummy auxiliary _do_, as you have to with normal verbs: _Did Maria used to throw the best parties?_ [/QUOTE] I’d say _Did Maria use to throw the best parties?_ [QUOTE=Excalibre] So let’s try it with used to: _Maria used to wake up at five every morning to practice the theremin._ \*_Maria used not to wake up at five every morning to practice the theremin_ doesn’t work at all. [/QUOTE] And I think _Maria used not to wake up at five every morning to practice the theremin_ is perfectly acceptable. However, all this proves is that “use” is a very oddly behaving modal verb, and that different English-speakers can have different feelings about what is correct usage with it. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/48 "2006-07-07T15:34:29Z")
[QUOTE=Giles] I’d say _Did Maria use to throw the best parties?_ And I think _Maria used not to wake up at five every morning to practice the theremin_ is perfectly acceptable. However, all this proves is that “use” is a very oddly behaving modal verb, and that different English-speakers can have different feelings about what is correct usage with it. [/QUOTE] And lets recall that in this thread, someone did cite a usage like “Used maria to…?” as one they have heard. So I think you’re right (and I think Excalibre would agree actually)–there are some pretty divergent usages of “used to” in different dialects of English. In 5000 years, it’s going to be one of those terms scholars really have to scratch their head hard to reconstruct in their articles on “Proto-Anglic” -Kris ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/49 "2006-07-07T17:07:39Z")
[QUOTE=Giles] I’d say _Did Maria use to throw the best parties?_ [/quote] I would take it as such a kindness if people would at least finish the paragraph before replying. It took a long time to write that post. Why do I bother if people aren’t going to actually read what I wrote? ---
**Author:** ![galt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@galt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galt)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/50 "2006-07-07T23:14:35Z")
[QUOTE=Excalibre] I would take it as such a kindness if people would at least finish the paragraph before replying. [/QUOTE] Are you just irritable or what? If you bothered to pay attention, you might notice a subtle difference between what **Giles** wrote and the usage you suggested at the end of that paragraph. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2006, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/51 "2006-07-07T23:32:07Z")
[QUOTE=galt] Are you just irritable or what? If you bothered to pay attention, you might notice a subtle difference between what **Giles** wrote and the usage you suggested at the end of that paragraph. [/QUOTE] You’re right. It appears there was a typo in what I wrote. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Cat\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Jones)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2006, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/52 "2006-07-09T18:55:30Z")
> [@](#): > > “I used to could do that.” This sounds wrong to me, I’m not saying it IS wrong mind you, in standard British English we’d use “be able to” in partnership with “used to” giving us “I used to be able to do that”. **Excalibre** - apologies for mixing you up earlier. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2006, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/53 "2006-07-10T00:18:41Z")
[QUOTE=Cat Jones] This sounds wrong to me, I’m not saying it IS wrong mind you, in standard British English we’d use “be able to” in partnership with “used to” giving us “I used to be able to do that”. [/quote] It’s nonstandard even here in the US, at least in the dialect one hears on TV. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2006, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/54 "2006-07-10T01:02:15Z")
> [@Cat Jones](#): > > Excalibre - apologies for mixing you up earlier. No worries. Just thought I’d point it out. 🙂 [QUOTE=Mr2001] It’s nonstandard even here in the US, at least in the dialect one hears on TV. [/QUOTE] Certainly is - I’m not positive I’ve heard it at all, but it strikes me as a rural dialect of some sort (like “might could”, which you’d hear on TV, but only in the mouth of an actor playing a hick.) ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/55 "2006-09-22T17:56:15Z")
[QUOTE=Balthisar] This isn’t something that developed only in English. In Spanish there’s the not-so-common verb _solir_ which conveys the same thing as in English, and also means literally _accustomed to_ as above. For example, “Solia ir al gymnasio, pero ya estoy muy flojo.” “I used to go to the gym…” [/QUOTE] “I’ve grown accustomed to your face” sounds so much better than “I’ve grown used to your face” 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132/56 "2006-09-22T18:04:32Z")
[QUOTE=ouryL] “I’ve grown accustomed to your face” sounds so much better than “I’ve grown used to your face” 😛 [/QUOTE] Do you really think that comment was worth reviving a thread that had been dead for two months? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/used-to-past-tense/363132.md?page=2)