| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
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| § 270. sneak |
| “I ducked down behind the paperbacks and snuck out,” writes Garrison Keillor in Lake Woebegone Days. Should he have sneaked out instead? The past tense snuck is an American invention. It first appeared in the 19th century as a nonstandard regional variant of sneaked. But widespread use of snuck has become more common with every generation. It is now used by educated speakers in all regions. Formal written English is more conservative than other varieties, of course, and here snuck still meets with much resistance. Many writers and editors have a lingering unease about the form, particularly if they recall its nonstandard origins. In fact, in 1990 a review of our citations, exhibiting almost 10,000 instances of sneaked and snuck, indicated that sneaked was preferred by a factor of seven to two. And 67 percent of the Usage Panel disapproved of snuck in our 1988 survey. Nevertheless, an examination of recent sources shows that snuck is sneaking up on sneaked. Snuck is almost 20 percent more common in newspaper articles published in 1995 than it was in 1985. Here are some examples from respected publications: “He ran up huge hotel bills and then snuck out without paying” (George Stade). “In the dressing room beforehand, while the NBC technician was making me up, Jesse Jackson snuck up behind me and began playfully powdering my face” (Bruce Babbitt). “The Reagan administration snuck in some illegal military assistance before that” (New Republic). “He had snuck away from camp with a cabinmate” (Anne Tyler). | 1 |
| More at
dive and
wake. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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