Maybe this is already well known but I accidentally discovered another pretty cool Scrivener trick. I had highlighted some text that I wanted in another note. For some reason- fatigue - I just drug it onto another note on the binder. I wasn’t trying to experiment; I just inadvertently slid it over there and saw this new note pop up already labeled. Scrivener had automatically created a new note underneath the note I drug it to and titled the new note with the first few words of the highlighted text. Pretty handy for making an easy to find note for quick reference or copying.
It’s just like the text clippings feature on Snow Leopard except even better.
What an intriguing neologism – and I’m not being facetious, I’m genuinely interested. Is this a common usage in the US? The word “snuck” has also appeared in the language over the past 10-15 years, instead of the standard “sneaked”, and also seems to have come out of America. I find myself wondering why American usage seems to favour irregular verbs (everybody in the UK uses “dived”, but I have heard Americans say “dove” (not pronounced like the bird). On the other hand, there is something of a tendency among UK glider pilots to use “glid” instead of “glided”, so it is not a purely American tendency.
Apologies for the ramble, but the usage was so striking that it caught my eye.
Yes, indeed. In fact, my edition of the Shorter OED gives similar roots for the words (Old English “slidan” and “glidan”). But the same dictionary only gives “glided” as a past tense, while for the other verb it offers “slid” and “slided”. I’m sure people would look at one strangely if one said “slided” but I never heard anyone (apart from myself) comment on the use of “glid”. Language – and the use of it – is truly very odd. English people say things like “less items” all the time, and appear to think it is normal, but I imagine that if one were to say “fewer petrol” it would not escape comment.
Drug is, I believe an archaic form of drag, in both intransitive and transitive forms. It pre-dates dragged, but then largely disappeared except in some dialects. I’ve never heard it used, myself, over here so it might be a regional thing—but neologism it is not.
When I was writing “neologism” a thought flashed through my mind that it might be an archaic form, but I didn’t check (as I ought to have done). My Shorter OED does indeed give it as existing in Middle English (with “to drug” meaning “to drag”). But in that case, I wonder what the past tense of “to drug” was in Middle English … However, there is nothing new under the sun, as they say. Thanks to all for an interesting exchange – I am now much better informed, if no wiser
My mother and aunts, born in Wyoming in the 1910s and 1920s, used to say, “Look what the cat drug in and wouldn’t eat,” whenever a long-lost person turned up.
Speaking from Oregon, I have heard people say slided instead of slid, but never ever heard glid.
And “Look what the cat drug in” is not an uncommon expression, applied under varying circumstances: when someone enters late or dishevelled or unexpected. In my experience, the only other use of “drug” is in dialog to indicate certain rural dialects. “He drug that varmint clear across the road” kind of thing.
And specifically to note, when using drug in this fashion, prefixing it with the word, done is fairly necessary. “He done drug that darned varmint clear across that there road 'fore you could count to ten.”
Glid? I’ve run into it a couple times in poetry, though I can’t put a hand on either of them at the moment. One I think was a translation of a short piece by Yannis Ritsos; the other was in a post-Odyssean epic, English original.
ALSO: A couple of dodgy past-tense forms from rural Western New York (which is much ruraler than you might believe, if Manhattan is your image of New York):
1/ For the past tense of bring, “brang.” But really, isn’t that more consistent with the structure of the language than “brought?” We don’t say, “sing/sought” or “ring/rought(wrought?),” although if we escape the tyranny of verbs we might find “thing/thought.” How about “fling/flang” or “fling/flought?” Is there any logic to “fling/flung?” If so, why not “brung” as past tense rather than as participle? And don’t even try to figure out “swing.” Which brings me to…
2/ [This one requires some idiomatic tolerance.] The verb “wing,” used as a synonym for “throw” takes “wung” as its past tense. At least, it does in the pastures and some of the school yards in Wyoming County, New York. “The left fielder picked up the ball and wung it in to second base.”
Wayne county: wang; He wang it all the way to second base.
I always thought that Appalachia had a pretty solid lock on “American Hicklic”* but as I am more involved with the native population of this area it dawns on me that the power base represented by the now unfunded “I love NY” campaign has systematically denied the existence of most of the state. Or maybe they think this is all Pennsylvania?
Although I am not sure why they keep taxing us to death if they don’t want us.
[size=70]Think famous paintings[/size]†
†[size=60]Yes, I know it isn’t funny if you have to explain it, but I always have to explain it and I like it so there.[/size]
The NYer left off the “steaming pile of” that most folks seem to think blankets this area. Other than that omission, I think this pretty much sums up the NYC view of the US.
What I always find funny is how folks don’t believe me when I tell them “you probably live closer to NYC than I do” or “I am more likely to get trampled by stampeding cows or brained by a falling apple than mugged”. Apparently NYS doesn’t exist.
Now if only this non-existent state would stop taxing me…
Wayne county: wang; He wang it all the way to second base.
I always thought that Appalachia had a pretty solid lock on “American Hicklic”* but as I am more involved with the native population of this area/quote]
Where I grew up, in the East Tennessee Hills, “wang” was what birds have. As in, “gimme at 'ere chicken wang or I’ll whale hell outn you.” Growing up speaking East Tennessee, and then meeting people who didn’t, was like traveling to another continent. My most common expression, upon moving to Boston: “Do what now?” (East Tennessee for “huh?”)
Then I moved to Maine 40 years ago, where everythang is happening either right now, or a very long time ago. “I see you when I come by. I hear you get done up to the plant. (You no longer work for the sardine packer.) Ain’t it you lives up there where the meeting house used to be?” (The Meeting House burned in the War of 1812.)
Thanks for the tip. I don’t know if it’s well known or not, but now it is better known.
To the rest of you lot: For goodness sake, at least address her original point before dissecting her word choices! Having grown up in the American South (Arkansas to be specific), I went to great pains to avoid the dialect and accents there for fear of being viewed as an under-educated simpleton or as a subject for study by my Northern “betters”.
Now ya’ll gotta mind your p’s and q’s, or I’m a fixin’ to tell ya’ll off again. Ya hear?
I remember a while ago, in the vicinity of one of the elite educational institutions of this nation, hearing a student say: “I didn’t do the reading before that class, so I wung* it.”
What a cool thread. The trick of dragging, sliding, gliding, winging text from one container out into the Binder becomes in miniature a demonstration of how language also emigrates and evolves. Fortunately, the drug/wung piece of text does not alter! Except that it’s now its own little linguistic isogloss, like a jar placed in Tennessee.
My grandparents, tenant farmers in the very rural parts of southern Indiana and Illinois, used many of the preterite verb forms you folks are describing, from Appalachia to Wyoming. That must be a band of central language migration, parallel to the northern and southern tiers. Grandma never used “came” in a sentence, it was always “he come” or “they come” and I did not dare correct her.
There’s a pretty decent trail to follow on this linguistic journey of (some of our) forefathers, in David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seeds: Four British Folkways in America. My take-away on first reading: “That explains a helluva lot.” After spending time in some of the source areas (The Midlands, Westcountry, East Anglia, and the Scottish Borders), I re-read it and thought the book explained one helluva lot more.
Three books I always assigned to provide background on the links between geography, language, and history were: Jacquetta Hawks, A Land; Robert MacNeil, The Story of English; and David Hackett Fisher, Albion’s Seed. All are very well-written, too.
there.[/size]