The anchor on TV said, “He snuck it in.”
I cringed. Here we are again with a massacre of the English language, I thought. Let’s talk about snuck. When I was young and my mother, an English teacher, was stressing the importance of using the English language correctly, she suggested two skills to master: the conjugation of verbs and the diagramming of sentences. So, at a very early age, I was doing both. Grammar and usage became part of dinner-table conversation. I could never sneak anything in. She would catch me instantly.
Let’s get to snuck. Think about this one. To sneak. I sneak. You sneak. They sneak. He sneaks. She sneaks. I was sneaking. The fox sneaked into the hen house. The Wall Street lawyer sneaked a paragraph into the contract.
Now replace sneak with snuck. Has the fox really snuck into the hen house for two nights in a row? Dear reader, if you want to sneak in snuck, have at it. The language is changing, and it always has. That’s been the case ever since language made its debut.
We did a little research here on the topic of sneak and snuck. Maybe there is some lost connection between the Anglo-Saxon verb snican (to crawl, to creep) and sneak, but that conjecture can never be established as fact because the connection can’t be traced in extant texts. Sneak, as far as we know, doesn’t show up in the English language until shortly after the turn of the 17th century, when the word made its debut in William Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure.
The past tense of sneak, it turns out, was originally sneaked, not snuck; but what seems to have happened is that some people came to think of sneak as the one of those old Anglo-Saxon strong (or irregular) verbs that have resisted change, like stick/stuck, drink/drank/drunk, etc. Working from that assumption, they invented snuck by analogy. (The fox has snuck into the hen house. New words snuck into the language.) They imposed an archaic grammar that persists today only in oft-used words from the Anglo-Saxon. Mostly, verbs have gone the other way, from strong to weak (forming the past and the perfect tense with -ed the way we generally do in modern English), instead of from weak to strong. Snuck has since gained quite a following.
For those who wish to sneak farther into the etymological weeds, here are a few of the discussions we turned up:
“Sneaked or Snuck: Which Is Correct?” https://www.grammarly.com/blog/sneaked-snuck/
“A Word, Please: The histories of some words can be found in written works from centuries ago,” https://www.latimes.com/socal/burbank-leader/news/story/2020-04-16/a-word-please-the-histories-of-some-words-can-be-found-in-written-works-from-centuries-ago
“Where did “snuck” come from?” https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/35030/where-did-snuck-come-from
Here’s another construction that rankles my ear now and would have scored me a lesson at the dinner table: “This matter is between him and I.” Aargh. “Give it to Clara and I.” I hear it and read it all the time. I learned that me, him, her, and them are objects of prepositions and action verbs. And if I didn’t follow that basic structure and choose the objective case, the mistake cost five points and a red pen on a paper submitted in a classroom.
Of course, these days we don’t submit papers in classrooms anymore, and we may use AI grammar checkers and spellcheck to identify issues and supply corrections that make us, as writers, a little more like robots ourselves). But if enough people say, “Between her and I” or “To Joe and I,” the language eventually changes. Distinctions and rules crumble. Snuck sneaks in. But there’s an effect. Those of us who are oldies and grew up with the rules will recognize the errors — the violations, I should say — at once. The folks who don’t know or remember an applicable rule won’t see anything amiss. But the folks who do will say, “Oops, that TV anchor isn’t using proper syntax or grammar,” or “The writer of that letter didn’t proofread.” And so it goes.
We live in a world where everything is spellchecked and automated and dictated but not always carefully proofread. Our battle with autocorrect on our phones is continual. If we want clarity, we have to proofread, or we send silly messages. And that’s the nature of the world in which we live.
This Sunday, I’d like to recommend a wonderful book by a talented writer who has spent decades copyediting for the New Yorker. In Between You and Me, Mary Norris unwinds a memoir, but one that weaves in lively discussions of the conventions and the subtleties of the language, including those a 21st-century grammar checker cannot adequately address, and she does so through a series of wonderful stories. They are her stories. She reflects on them after 35 years of plying her craft. She is the quintessential lover of the English language and a copy editor who doesn’t want to oppress writers or speakers to force them into submission. She devotes an entire chapter to a personal story in which love trumps the grammar we learned in the classroom (or at the kitchen table).
She explains how the language works (you will find yourself brushing up on “between you and me,” those mysterious hyphens, both necessary and discretionary commas and semicolons, and modifiers that sometimes go astray) and how language changes over time. She explores the nuances of the choices that writers and their copy editors mull and debate. Gasp – get a batch of copy editors together in a room, and they may not agree!
As delightful summer reading for those who love the language, we recommend Between You and Me, by Mary Norris (https://www.amazon.com/Between-You-Me-Confessions-Comma/dp/0393352145). It’s marvelous. I recommend it not only for Mary’s artful prose (that would be enough, on its own), her humor, and her tenacious quest for the very best pencils and a sharpener that won’t break them, but also for an immaculately parsed discussion of the English language, its quirks, and its artful possibilities.
Between you and me, I think you will like her book. Try to sneak it in.
David R. Kotok
Chairman of the Board & Chief Investment Officer
Email | Bio
Links to other websites or electronic media controlled or offered by Third-Parties (non-affiliates of Cumberland Advisors) are provided only as a reference and courtesy to our users. Cumberland Advisors has no control over such websites, does not recommend or endorse any opinions, ideas, products, information, or content of such sites, and makes no warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, reliability or suitability of their content. Cumberland Advisors hereby disclaims liability for any information, materials, products or services posted or offered at any of the Third-Party websites. The Third-Party may have a privacy and/or security policy different from that of Cumberland Advisors. Therefore, please refer to the specific privacy and security policies of the Third-Party when accessing their websites.
Sign up for our FREE Cumberland Market Commentaries
Cumberland Advisors Market Commentaries offer insights and analysis on upcoming, important economic issues that potentially impact global financial markets. Our team shares their thinking on global economic developments, market news and other factors that often influence investment opportunities and strategies.
