Sunday, November 10, 2013

U vs A



It has been a dilemma faced by many speakers and writer of the English language...is it drank or drunk? I took a look at the differences between a couple key words to see if it is more common for us to use 'a' or 'u' to describe the past. 

This compares the use of drunk to drank. I'm including the two links (drank drunk) to show that there isn't that much of a decrease in drank (with only about 10 more hits per million words).

Sprung has decreased in use compared to sprang, but appears to be growing again in the last couple of decades.

"You sunk my battleship!" Apparently isn't used as often now as it used to be. However, sank as a word in general is also on the decline. 

Shrinking clothes may not be your biggest worry, but if you did have to talk about it it's more likely that you would use the word shrank to explain them. 

Apparently we didn't notice bad smells as often as we do now until the 1910s (COHA had very little data until then). When we describe something with a bad smell now a days, we are most likely to use the word stank.


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