Comments on: Sneaking up on “Snuck”

By: Jeff Harris

Jeff Harris — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:23:20 +0000

To me me sneaked sounds like what must be done to your feet before a basketball game.

Its time to go to school boys…is everyone sneaked.

But I can see how snuck would rub people the wrong way. But to consider someone ill mannered or uneducated is a bit much. Especially if they don’t understand the definition of words like unconsciously and subconsciously themselves.

But they way if you meant subconsciously you not be aware of your feelings enough to post anything about it.

English is a sneaky language for sure.

By: M Bouchard

M Bouchard — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 19:54:51 +0000

Being from Canada we are exposed to both american and british, umm everything. However I would say for us it depends on the use of the word. I use both when talking.
I sneaked our last night.
I snuck up on them last night.
So for myself it does depend. Some people say elfs instead of elves dwarfs instead of dwarves, but I have never heard knifes instead of knives. the ve sounds better and less like you are slurping back spit. But I won’t correct someone if the use elfs. I HAVE seen it in print.

By: J. Solomon

J. Solomon — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 07:35:20 +0000

“Snuck” sounds to me like a word to describe fornicating snakes, and always will. I immediately, unconsciously, consider the user to be poorly educated and ill-mannered.

By: thatguy

thatguy — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:20:01 +0000

If you think for one second that “snuck” is the first of commonly accepted colloquialisms to be confused for formal english over the course of centuries of a constantly growing and changing language, then you are sorely mistaken. Yes, “between you and I” is as incorrect as the sun is hot, but what we are talking about here isn’t a matter of grammar (something which also changes over time, although much more slowly), but a matter of changing spelling and conjugation. All that is happening is that a verb is becoming irregular when it was once regular.

This idea that language does not and should not change would still have us in the era of Middle English. I’d much sooner spend my time focusing on people who can neither spell sneaked nor snuck than worrying about the evolution of a word. Language exists to serve its users, not the other way around.

And to be honest, sneaked has never sounded right to me. For formal writing, I will use it, but I do not like doing so. I’ll wait patiently until prissy, uptight linguists worried about the least threatening changes to the written and spoken word start focusing on some other trivial change so I can use snuck with an abnormal level of joy in formal writing, because that is what will happen as language changes over time.

It’s one thing to wish to preserve language; it’s another to take up arms because a harmless change rubs you the wrong way a lot more than it should.

By: Rosemary Holdredge

Rosemary Holdredge — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:46:02 +0000

I am completely appalled by the use of “snuck.” It is substandard English, but it has been misused so much that now people think it’s OK. “Snuck” originated with Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn, so if you want to sound like Huck, go right ahead and say “snuck.”

IMHO, “snuck” ranks right up there with “between you and I” as the most egregious English error. “Between you and I” or “spoke to Jim and I” were foisted on us by English teachers, who also told us to put commas and periods outside quotation marks, instead of inside, where they belong. Note that the previous two comments have commas and periods on the outside.