Ever been confused about the past tense of the word 'dive'? You'll see it in literature as both 'dived' and 'dove'.
The truth is that both are correct. Purists from Britain will argue that only 'dived' is correct, and that is the form you will see there. In Canada you will see a mix of both. The US mainly uses 'dove', and this latter form has been in use for well over a century.
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A Holmes Christmas Carol
2 hours ago
I think I always use dove but I'm not sure. Words like this always make me feel unsure of myself.
ReplyDeleteThat's good to know! And I always use dove.
ReplyDeleteAnd you didn't even count those tricksy Australians...
ReplyDeleteI kept running into it lately, so I decided to look it up finally. I always used dove also, but I was mainly running into dived.
ReplyDeleteHa! I totally would have though dove was the only right one, but there are a lot of those that have dialectic differences. There are lots of these. I wrote a blog at one point in defense of 'snuck' which is apparently newly accepted, but is the ONLY word (as opposed to sneaked which sounds stupid to me) used in the northwest US. My editors never make me change it, so that's good.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I would never used dived, which is odd, because I usually like British English habits better than American English ones.
ReplyDelete