dream And dreamed are all acceptable past forms of dream. dream follows the pattern of regular verbs, ending in “-ed” while dreamed is unusual. Often the irregular or “strong” form of a word gives way and is replaced by the normalized form, but both dreamed And dreamed is still being used.
Let’s say it’s Monday morning at the water cooler and your colleague is recounting one of their other fascinating dreams: “It’s cold, and we’re all walking in a large field, and there were fish swimming around our feet even though there was no water, and…” It’s hard to hold back a yawn, isn’t it?
We’re not going to consider whether other people’s dreams are always boring (of course not!), but we’re going to consider our past tense. dream To be.
You know, maybe we’ll take a nap first.
What did your colleague do last night? They dream of that field full of cold fish? Or rather did they dream about it?
The answer is one of two.
Both dreamed And dreamed was the past form of dream from the 14th century. Romeo says to Mercutio in Shakespeare’s work: “Tonight I dreamed a dream”. Romeo and Julietwritten in the late 16th century. Shakespeare often chooses dreamed in his works, but occasionally employed dreamed also. A century and change later, Jonathan Swift vacated the middle dreamed And dreamed IN Stella Magazinea series of letters written between 1710 and 1713 and published after his death in 1766, but chose dreamed for a past occurrence of dream in 1726 Gulliver’s travels. By the 19th century, evidence showed that most great writers (or perhaps their editors and/or publishers) were somewhat contradictory. While Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray are dedicated dreamed users and Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf are always popular dreamed, other writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries—among them Charlotte Brontë, Mark Twain, GK Chesterton, Herman Melville, Walter Scott, Joseph Conrad, Jack London, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, HG Wells, James Joyce and PG Wodehouse—used both. But both the literary world and English-speaking people in general are definitively far away dreamedwith dreamed became the predominant form in the first half of the 19th century.
Regular and irregular verbs
dream, of course, follows the pattern of most verbs. Most English verbs have the familiar form -ed for their past tense and past participle forms. These are “regular” verbs that play by the rules. Other unpredictable verbs are “irregular.” Regular verbs are sometimes called “weak” and irregular verbs are sometimes called “strong”, perhaps because the former is a docile and docile group while the latter seems to be like doing whatever they want. Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary (a dictionary for non-native speakers) lists about 300 irregular verbs, most of them simple words, usually with one syllable. It’s a small number, but its members are powerful: they include the ones we use most often; As linguist Steven Pinker has pointed out, the ten most common English verbs (To be, Have, DO, speak, do, Go, take, arrive, seeAnd take) is irregular, and chances are (70% good) that if you are using a verb it is an irregular verb.
Both regular and irregular verbs have Old English words, but the number of verbs ho-hum -ed Forms have increased over the centuries, and only the most common irregular verbs retain their odd conjugations. There are still glimpses of less common strong verb forms here and there, especially in dialect English. Some Southerners might say, “I love climbing trees, but I’ve never climbed there.” climb up has been standard since about the 16th century, but other forms persist, revealed in dialects.
Sometimes things go in the opposite direction. sneak has a regular past form sneak when it appeared in the late 1500s, but in the late 1800s, the form sneak appeared in the United States. That form is now more common here by some estimates than sneak. sneak It was widely derided in the United Kingdom — but still used in some places and in respected newspapers — and it was also hated by those on this side of the pond.
In spite of dream seems to be another verb that has followed the expected trajectory of weakening to regularity, both dreamed And dreamed is being used, and you can use the stronger and less common form if you wish. We wouldn’t tell you otherwise.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
