Grinded vs. Ground

[CalBishForNow]

"He was grinding his still-clothed crotch against her ass when his wife came into the room with her .38."

I think you mean "when his wife cummed into the room with her .38."

 

[RocketGrunt]

I think you mean "when his wife cummed into the room with her .38."

No, that would be "his wife had cummed into the room with her .38." The verb "to cum" only goes to "cummed" as part of the past perfect. Simple past is still "came."

 

[TheArsonist]

Yes, 'hang' is another example. 'Swam' and 'swim' isn't, because one is simple past (I swam) and the other is perfect (I have swum): lots of verbs have two different forms here. I can't think of an appropriate technical term for the 'hanged'/'hung' and 'shone'/'shined' distinction.

You also have lighted/lit, dived/dove, sneaked/snuck, slayed/slew, etc.
(Cases like "ring," where you have two completely separate verbs that merely look the same – to ring a bell, to form a ring around something – should probably be considered apart. And let's not get into the lie/lay/laid mess.)

The linguist Steven Pinker argues that the co-existence of a regular (weak) and irregular (strong) conjugation usually comes from verbs that are so rare that many users don't know/remember the irregular form, causing them to be regularized over time (the ones with two forms being in transition). That explains more uncommon words like cleaved/clove, but doesn't really work for the examples mentioned (especially cases like "dove", where the irregular form is newer than the regular one). English speakers do sometimes coin irregular forms jokingly (like yeet/yote), and some may stick around.

He also points out that when verbs are created from nouns, they are always regular even if similar or identical to an irregular verb. So that if I coin the verb "to undrive" for taking the hard drive out of a computer, the past tense would be "undrived," not "undrove," and we talk about a time curve having "hockey-sticked," not "hockey-stuck." That probably accounts for shined/shone (with "shined" meaning to have "put a shine" on something).

 

[SimonDoom]

"ground" is grammatically correct, and is the word I'd probably use, as in "he ground his hips into hers as they lay together on the bed."

But--this is my personal take--I think leeway is allowed in spelling and grammar in describing erotic encounters, because I believe it's OK to use words in a way that the characters in your story might plausibly use them, or as a way of connecting with your readers, who might like the use of the deviant word better in that setting. So, for instance, if people want to write "I'm cumming!" I'm fine with that.

 

[TheLobster]

Damn, we're on the 4th page now... I wouldn't have thunk this is such a complicated topic!

 

[SimonDoom]

Damn, we're on the 4th page now... I wouldn't have thunk this is such a complicated topic!

On AH threads, the length of the thread and number of comments aren't necessarily proportional to the intrinsic interest or importance of the topic.

 

[Dodola]

Cases like "ring," where you have two completely separate verbs that merely look the same – to ring a bell, to form a ring around something – should probably be considered apart.

I'm usually not one to nitpick, but ring a bell - ring is a verb
Form a ring around something- form is the verb, ring is a noun

 

[BeechLeaf]

TheArsonist meant the first verb 'ring' as in 'I ringed the advertisement in the paper, and later I rang the number'. 'Form a ring' was an explanation of the meaning, not an actual use.

 

[Dodola]

TheArsonist meant the first verb 'ring' as in 'I ringed the advertisement in the paper, and later I rang the number'. 'Form a ring' was an explanation of the meaning, not an actual use.

Thank you.
My coffee is still brewing. I should never comment before coffee.

Edit: ground coffee, becoming coffee grounds

 

[BeechLeaf]

Then of course there's 'I wrung out the towel', at which point the foreign learner has hysterics and has to be sedated.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Actually, neither of those. "A crown ringed with roses" or "the goblin spearmen ringed the cavalry on all sides" is a construction where "ring" has been verbified. It's a verb that means to encircle. So you could say "Go my monkeys! Ring the heroes and encroach upon them until they have nowhere to place their feet!"

And what gets even better is that "ring out" means the opposite, to take something out of the circle. And that can be shortened to just "ring." So "the wrestler ringed his opponent" could mean either that the wrestler moved around the other wrestler in a circular path or it could mean that he pushed his opponent out of the ring that defined the conflict zone.

WordHippo's thesaurus has thirty-two entries for the word "ring," one of them is obscene, and it's not comprehensive. English has a LOT of available nuance.

 

[BeechLeaf]

I would say that's essentially the same verb: the noun 'ring' converted to a verb meaning 'form a ring around', whether it's soldiers ringing an enemy or a pen ringing an advertisement. As a conversion, it takes weak morphology: 'ringed'.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

It literally, genuinely does. In English you are straight up allowed to make up a word and use it. And if people understand based on context, it becomes a perfectly cromulent English word.

Yes, technically you are correct. You can make up a word if it makes perfect sense or paints a more perfect picture than the normal use word. However in this case, grinded does not improve the sentence over ground, so it's not a good literary trick. What you are talking about is something like this.

I couldn't get the damn thing open so I just grabbed a knife and OJed it.

OJed isn't a word. I made up a verb out of a proper noun and painted an image that easily depicts what I did to open the 'damn thing'. That is perfectly acceptable in English, as you say.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

But--this is my personal take--I think leeway is allowed in spelling and grammar in describing erotic encounters, because I believe it's OK to use words in a way that the characters in your story might plausibly use them,

Including in speech tags.

 

[SimonDoom]

Including in speech tags.

I'm fussier about speech tags. I prefer them simple. I think it can get silly when authors try too hard to come up with fancy speech tags when "said" and "asked" will do. But that's just me.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I'm fussier about speech tags. I prefer them simple. I think it can get silly when authors try too hard to come up with fancy speech tags when "said" and "asked" will do. But that's just me.

"Whatever you say," she snarked.

 

[SimonDoom]

"Whatever you say," she snarked.

That definitely does not pass the Doom Test.

Not that anyone was asking.

 

[crookedletter]

I'm fussier about speech tags. I prefer them simple. I think it can get silly when authors try too hard to come up with fancy speech tags when "said" and "asked" will do. But that's just me.

I agree. "Said" is essentially invisible, variants are distracting. Better to add little delivery cues like that through actions and descriptors, in my opinion. "Whatever you say," she said, rolling her eyes.

 

[SimonDoom]

I agree. "Said" is essentially invisible, variants are distracting. Better to add little delivery cues like that through actions and descriptors, in my opinion. "Whatever you say," she said, rolling her eyes.

Exactly. Adding "she snarked" as a tag to "Whatever you say" is redundant. Unnecessary. It makes me think of Tom Swifties. To me, it reads like an author who lacks the confidence to communicate a scene in the most direct way and feels the need to goose up the language.

 

[TheLobster]

"Whatever you say," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Whatever you say." She rolled her eyes.

 

[Statius]

For new or inexperienced writers, the last five posts, in my opinion, are actually the most interesting. Something simple really that is often overlooked or not thought about. Sometimes 'accidental' writing tips and explanations are the best ones. And to be clear, this isn't sarcasm; I found those posts to be an insightful take on writing tags.

 

[RocketGrunt]

When you're writing longer texts, simple language gets very repetitive. You genuinely do not want to use the word "said" fifty-seven times in a single story, and that is not a flippant exaggeration for effect. I was just recently looking at a 10k word story and fifty-seven was the actual number of times the word "said" was used.

 

[crookedletter]

When you're writing longer texts, simple language gets very repetitive. You genuinely do not want to use the word "said" fifty-seven times in a single story, and that is not a flippant exaggeration for effect. I was just recently looking at a 10k word story and fifty-seven was the actual number of times the word "said" was used.

It appears 260 times in my ~24K word story. It would appear 300 times if there were 40 more lines of dialogue needing tags.

I don't find that repetitive in the slightest. YMMV, as kids around here like to say.

 

[BeechLeaf]

I have various rules of thumb for speech tags. About one in four speeches need a tag, even if it's just between two people. You the writer might be able to keep their voices apart, but readers (including the writer coming back to it a few months later) will lose track.

Of those tags, at least half should be just 'said'. The rest should be mostly anodyne ones like 'replied', 'asked', 'went on'. Given that, you can then sprinkle in ones that are semantically more functional, like 'snorted', 'commanded', 'smiled', 'declared'. Don't reach out for colourful ones, but you don't have to avoid valuable ones if they're not excessive. (I'm not claiming I actually get this balance right in my published works.)

 

[TheLobster]

Given that, you can then sprinkle in ones that are semantically more functional, like 'snorted', 'commanded', 'smiled', 'declared'

You can’t smile a line of dialogue, and it’s very dubious you can snort one unless the character possesses a pig-like snout. Your advice is sound but this is where you confused speech tags with action tags.