read the title. please answer.
wet sloppy kisses,
jb
Ah, an easy one.
The answer is: ‘obligated’ is not a real word. But ‘obligation’ is, and it get bastardized out of that. The correct term is, and always has been, ‘obliged’.
**ob·li·gate (bl-gt)
v. tr. ob·li·gat·ed, ob·li·gat·ing, ob·li·gates. **
Obligated is the correct past tense for obligate.
Obliged is the correct past tense for oblige.
Oblige and obligate are synonyms. They can have slightly different connotations, with obliged tending to imply more of a moral/ethical constraint and obligate more of a legal/contractual restrint, but this is by no means consistent in usage.
What’s the difference between MPSIMS and GQ?
Hmm. A friend of mine, who is an English major, told me ‘obligated’ is not a real word.
Darn.
Obliged carries a preposition with it (sometimes “to”), and thus has an indirect object. Obligated carries the same preposition but (in my experience) that preposition is 1. “to,” 2. followed by a verb, and 3. hi Opal!