Participles not thriving
Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, it looks like we’ve lost some irregular conjugations of “to thrive”. Whereas I would say “The economy throve on foo, and has thriven on bar ever since”, educated people, including plenty of analysts on NPR, are saying “The economy thrived on foo, and has thrived on bar ever since.”
Linguists are well past being prescriptive, and are now descriptive, grammarians, bestselling books be damned. And many of my word choices are affectations, or at least began as such — using constructions such as these are they more or less self-consciously. But this isn’t one of those. It’s not even a wincer, like “heighth” is. It is simply as natively jarring to my ear as “He goed to the store one day, and has goed every day since.” OK, so, fine, do away with irregular verbs — it makes English far easier for learners, and who gives a whit about Old Norse — but, real question, when did we lose the past conjugation and past participle of to thrive, if indeed we have?
Paging Jordon.
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3 Responses to “Participles not thriving”
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March 7th, 2009 at 07h08
Maybe it’s just that I’m a teenager, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard “throve” or “thriven.” The form “thrived” sounds fine to me, and it’s what I would use. In fact, it seems that I have. The problem, I think, is that “thrive” isn’t a common enough word for people to immediately understand (or to understand immediately) what “throve” or “thriven” refers to.
March 9th, 2009 at 14h13
What about drive? Strive?
March 9th, 2009 at 14h26
Drive, drove, driven. Anything else sounds like how “thrived” must sound to you.
I also thought of strive, strived, strived at first, but then I remembered that “strove” and “striven” don’t sound too funny. I would consider both schemes acceptable. This is interesting.