# dived vs dove



## Egoexpress

Hello again,

Just a little query. Would you be more likely to use _dove _or _dived_ as the past form of dive? or it's simply a matter of taste again!?

I dove\dived in the Red sea.

Thanks for the help!


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## Alxmrphi

Without a shadow of a doubt my vote is for 'dived'. I personally would never say _dove._


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## Loob

I believe "dived" is BrE, "dove" is AmE. But I've been wrong before.

Many, *many* times


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## mplsray

Loob said:


> I believe "dived" is BrE, "dove" is AmE. But I've been wrong before.
> 
> Many, *many* times


 
It's used in both branches of the language (and in Canadian English as well), according to the usage note in the entry for the verb _dive_ in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

When I first read this thread, I realized I was not sure which one I use! (I rarely go swimming, so I don't have occasion to use either one in that context.) If I were forced to choose, I guess I'd go with _dived._


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## Loob

You - and M-W - may well be right, Ray.

I've only ever heard "dove" in AmE contexts, but there may well be varieties of BrE that use it.


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## MJSinLondon

I would say "I went diving in the Red Sea". I might say "I dived into the Red Sea".  But I would never use, nor have I ever heard used, "I dove..."


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## GreenWhiteBlue

I grew up saying "dove", but I now try to remind myself to say "dived".


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## JamesM

GreenWhiteBlue said:


> I grew up saying "dove", but I now try to remind myself to say "dived".


 
Why?

Just to elaborate, "dove" as past tense of "dive" has been used by Horatio Alger, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thornton Wilder, to name a few.  I don't think there is any stigma associated with using the word.  Contemporary writers to use "dove" include John Irving and Stuart Woods, among many others.


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## chamyto

I have always used "dove" as the past of "dive"


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## GreenWhiteBlue

JamesM said:


> Why?


 
Because the word in its origins is a regular verb, and I see no reason to inflict irregularity upon it unncecessarily, especially since verbs cannot increase the fiber in their diet to compensate.


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## mplsray

GreenWhiteBlue said:


> Because the word in its origins is a regular verb, and I see no reason to inflict irregularity upon it unncecessarily, especially since verbs cannot increase the fiber in their diet to compensate.



Once a regular verb has become irregular, however, and has been widely adopted (as is the case with _dive_) to insist that such an argument has any value is to commit the etymological fallacy.


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## teretani

<< Moderator's note: Merged with previous thread.  Please read from the top. >>

Hi. I checked the dictionary and they seem to be both OK. But which one sounds more natural? I mean one that doesn't sound too Shakespearean 


the first quarter sales dived or dove?
the population has dived? has dove?

thanks


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## perpend

I would say: XXX took a dive


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## bennymix

In AE, 'dove' is not so common, I think.  So, 'dived.'   This applies esp. to the example in the OP.


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## se16teddy

In modern BE,_ dove_ does not exist at all - I think of it as AE.


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## bennymix

se16,

I think you meant to preface your statement with "In my experience..."

http://www.theguardian.com/news/dat...tion-2010-opinion-polls-information-beautiful

*General election 2010:*



> But how accurate are they? Are they politically biased? Are some polls more accurate than others? Are they getting more exact as the technology gets better?
> 
> To answer, I dove into the poll results from the last 3 elections, calculating accuracy and hunting for patterns



===
www.westbriton.co.uk/minutes-Melissa-Reid/story...detail/story.html

*Five minutes with Melissa Reid* | Cornish Guardian

By Cornish Guardian | Posted: September 19, 2013 


> Most embarrassing sporting memory? I don't have one but I have many embarrassing photos that my sister likes to bring out every so often, her favourite is me looking like a frog in a green swimsuit and giant goggles before I dove into a pool.



============


se16teddy said:


> In modern BE,_ dove_ does not exist at all - I think of it as AE.


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## perpend

teretani said:


> << Moderator's note: Merged with previous thread.  Please read from the top.
> 1) the first quarter sales dived or dove?
> 2) the population has dived? has dove?



I would use neither "dived" nor "dove", in neither 1) nor 2). What is the context, teretani?


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## bennymix

We have two senses of 'dive,' here, and that might relate to the past tense:  1)  go down (like a market);    2 jump & direct oneself downward, usually headfirst, into something.

The OP of the old thread dealt with sense 2) and the OP in the new thread (#13) deals with sense 1).    The merger of threads may lend to confusion.


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## Keith Bradford

bennymix said:


> We have two senses of 'dive,' here, and that might relate to the past tense: 1) go down (like a market); 2 jump & direct oneself downward, usually headfirst, into something...



But for the vast majority of British speakers, both are regular verbs: dive, dived, have dived.  It's hard to see how the "strong" version came about, as there's no common verb that goes _?ive - ?ove_; an analogy with _heave - hove _or with _rise - rose_????

*Dove *is a kind of bird in the pigeon family, _Columbidae_.


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## se16teddy

bennymix said:


> I think you meant to preface your statement with "In my experience..."


Bennymix, do you have any evidence that the authors of your articles 1) are British and 2) are so patriotic as to erect a strict _cordon sanitaire_ against exotic influence?


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## Keith Bradford

I've just looked further into this (_Shorter OED_). Apparently, there were two verbs in Old English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon): the strong verb _dufan, _to duck or sink_, _with the past tense _deaf_; and the weak verb _dyfan_, past tense _dyfde_, to submerge. 

The first of these was obsolete by 1300 and it's the second, weak, verb that lives on. The irregular past tense _dove _is a *modern invention*, perhaps copied from _drive - drove_.

I agree with GreenWhiteBlue (#10): "I see no reason to inflict irregularity upon it unncecessarily". That's not an argument from etymology, just an argument for common sense.


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## natkretep

I only use _dive_ myself, but I think I hear the very occasional _dove_ in BrE too. But always only to mean physical plunging (_he dived/dove into the bushes_) never to do with temperatures or share indexes (never, say_,_ _the temperatures dove_)and therefore never also _nosedove_!


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## JamesM

Keith Bradford said:


> I've just looked further into this (_Shorter OED_). Apparently, there were two verbs in Old English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon): the strong verb _dufan, _to duck or sink_, _with the past tense _deaf_; and the weak verb _dyfan_, past tense _dyfde_, to submerge.
> 
> The first of these was obsolete by 1300 and it's the second, weak, verb that lives on. The irregular past tense _dove _is a *modern invention*, perhaps copied from _drive - drove_.



Any idea how modern?  I can find a reference in 1836 in Google Books.  (This makes it older than the word "cardigan", for example, and about the time we dropped the use of the long "s" that looked so much like an "f".)  Is there a first citing in the OED?


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## bennymix

Hi Se 16, 
On 1)  Yes, I checked for nationality/birthplace/residence in my examples.  There are British.  On 2)  I have no idea of their 'patriotism', if indeed you're serious.  It's your speculation of American influence (re this word) for which you've presented no evidence.

I wonder if there's a name, other than 'local insularity'  for this phenomenon.   It's some kind of infection in _some_ British posters, with certain salient exceptions, see Loob, above.   The sign of this 'infection' is that when a British person hasn't himself heard of a word or phrase, he says,
"It doesn't exist in Britain;  it must be an American phenomenon, and if it's here, it's either Americans resident here or American influence at work" and (crucially), he persists in this position in the face of OED citations and other evidence to the contrary.     Of course we all make inferential mistakes, faulty generalizations,  etc. as investigated by _Kahneman_ and _Tversky._ We have our ideas of hiccup and cold remedies, but the particular nationalist form of 'egocentric fallacy' I've mentioned seems to come up in some British posters on these boards.

Clearly language usage in both countries (US and Britain) is influenced by practices in the other, and the predominant numbers of American published books affect British usage.   At the same time, in my view, there is an oscillatory phenomenon.   Some American usages reflect older British usages (e.g. the subjunctive), so, if they currently have an effect, it's a de facto repatriation of a British phenomenon.
============



se16teddy said:


> Bennymix, do you have any evidence that the authors of your articles 1) are British and 2) are so patriotic as to erect a strict _cordon sanitaire_ against exotic influence?


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## Packard

I say "dived" and I believe that is all I've ever heard in metro-New York area.  But I would not "correct" anyone who said "dove".

_The dove dove and landed on my car.  Then I started to drive and as I drove the dove dove again.

__The dove dived and landed on my car.  Then I started to drive and as I drove the dove dived again._


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## MattiasNYC

I would use "dove". I'm not sure which I've heard used the most in the US, but I certainly recall hearing "dove head first into" and never "dived head first". To me "dived" sounds ugly.




Keith Bradford said:


> I agree with GreenWhiteBlue (#10): "I see no reason to inflict  irregularity upon it unncecessarily". That's not an argument from  etymology, just an argument for common sense.



I too agree.


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## sdgraham

I do note, however, that I've never heard those fond of "dove," say "nosedove"


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## JamesM

sdgraham said:


> I do note, however, that I've never heard those fond of "dove," say "nosedove"



  No, nor have I heard "the snow-drove plains".    Still, I would use "drove" in other contexts just as I would use "dove" in other contexts.

(I just asked my two nearest cubicle mates to chime in on "dived" vs. "dove"; they were both solidly in the "dove" camp.  A very unscientific poll, I know.   )


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## MattiasNYC

sdgraham said:


> I do note, however, that I've never heard those fond of "dove," say "nosedove"



That's right. Nosedived sounds better.


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## JamesM

MattiasNYC said:


> That's right. Nosedived sounds better.



To me it would probably be "took a nosedive".  I wouldn't conjugate it, just as I would say "He took a faceplant" and not "He faceplanted".


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## Packard

JamesM said:


> To me it would probably be "took a nosedive".  I wouldn't conjugate it, just as I would say "He took a faceplant" and not "He faceplanted".



I agree.

The same with "facelift".  

She had a face-lift.

She had her face-lifted.  (Who'd steal an ugly face like that!)

Some words should not be conjugated in English (in Latin, fine; not in English).


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## sdgraham

JamesM said:


> To me it would probably be "took a nosedive".  I wouldn't conjugate it, just as I would say "He took a faceplant" and not "He faceplanted".



"Nosedived" is, however, rather common.

See     http://www.alaskadispatch.com/artic...n-nosedived-last-summer-further-cuts-proposed


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## JamesM

Yes, that's true.  It is fairly common.


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## KHS

COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English):
dove = 3164 instances
dived = 598 instances
BNC (British National Corpus):
dove = 298
dived = 427


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## JamesM

The trick is that "dove" could be the noun for the bird.  Did you filter that out somehow?


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## bennymix

Thanks, KHS.   Assuming 'dove' is past tense, not a bird, it appears to represent about 40% BE usage, with 'dived' merely half again as much.
I tried a search, and used "dove into" to rule out the bird, and found lots of cases,  though our British posters would find faults like "has a American grandmother" or "wears Birkenstocks."

So tell, how did you get the birds out?     I think combining 'dove into' and 'dove in' would capture most, but transitions still came up.
"In his right hand he held a dove; in his left, a knife."

ADDED:  See subsequent posts.  The reported figures are _way_ off.   My comments are thus irrelevant.




KHS said:


> COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English):
> dove = 3164 instances
> dived = 598 instances
> BNC (British National Corpus):
> dove = 298
> dived = 427


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## KHS

Oh, James, you are so right.  
It is now 
"dived" 267 (eliminating past participles, I assume) and "dove" 6 in the BNC, 
and 
dived - 335, dove - 671 in COCA.


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## bennymix

So, KHS, it appears that British usage of 'dove' in past, might represent about 5% of usage.    That makes more sense.   40% was a bit much.


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## Andygc

bennymix said:


> So tell, how did you get the birds out?


For the BNC:  dove_V*
6 results, of which 2 are erroneous - those 2 are both "dove grey", the colour.
For the noun, dove_N*
296 results. Of those I found one where it was actually the verb, one an Italian quotation, and one a typo for 'drove'.

The verb form 'dove' exists in BE, but it's pretty uncommon.

PS
dived_VVD = the past tense form
342 results


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## bennymix

Thanks Andy.   Don't you think that combining 'dove into' and 'dove in' would do the job?    I found the two examples I posted (post #16) without much trouble.
So your total of 4 seems very low.


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## Andygc

If you want to search a corpus, the sensible thing to do is to use the tools provided. Try "the dove in the garden" - hmm.


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## JamesM

COCA allows you to specify it in this way: 'dove.[v*]'

This searches for dove only when it is a verb. I got 679 results.


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## bennymix

Actually, I used only 'dove into';  'dove in'  was an afterthought.  I see it's liable to problems as you point out.   I suppose now you'll say,  
"I observed the flight of the dove into the tower."  

Thanks for the search, however.


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## PaulQ

JamesM said:


> Any idea how modern?  I can find a reference in 1836 in Google Books.  (This makes it older than the word "cardigan", for example, and about the time we dropped the use of the long "s" that looked so much like an "f".)  Is there a first citing in the OED?


You should submit your 1836 finding to the OED. It predates their earliest by 19 years:





> 1855   H. W. Longfellow Hiawatha vii. 96   _Straight into the river Kwasind Plunged as if he were an otter, Dove as if he were a beaver._
> 1857   Canad. Jrnl. Industry Sci. & Art 2 Sept. 351   _In England when a swimmer makes his first leap, head foremost, into the water he is said to dive, and is spoken of as having dived... Not so however, is it with the modern refinements of our Canadian English. In referring to such a feat here, it would be said, not that he dived, but that he dove._


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## Myridon

JamesM said:


> COCA allows you to specify it in this way: 'dove.[v*]'


You can do the same sort of thing with Ngram Viewer, but I really doubt that they've actually encoded all those books by hand. The graph looks interesting though.


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## se16teddy

I avoided the_ columbidae _issue by comparing the frequency of_ he dived _and _he dove _in a US and a British source. 

A Google search on _"he dived" site:www.washingtonpost.com/"_ produces about 229 results, whereas_"he dove" site:www.washingtonpost.com/_produces about 306 results. It seems, then, that that _dove_ is a bit commoner than _dived_ in the Washington Post. 

A search on _he dived_ in the British National Corpus (BNC) produces 44 results, whereas a search on _he dove_ produces only one. 

As Bennymix says in #24, the AE/BE border is porous, so this seems quite an astonishing difference. There can't be many more American words than _dove_! Especially considering that no cultural (extra-linguistic) issue is involved here. 

I doubt this is statistically significant, but it is also arguable that the specimen of _he dove_ in the BNC does not have particularly convincing "British" credentials. It is from _Old serpent Nile. A journey to the source_, by Stanley Stewart. According to Wikipedia, Stanley Stewart was born in Ireland, grew up in Canada, and has spent most of his adult life in the UK.


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## JamesM

Myridon said:


> You can do the same sort of thing with Ngram Viewer, but I really doubt that they've actually encoded all those books by hand. The graph looks interesting though.



I think these are very interesting.  

British English

American English


The charts are very different.  In the 21st century (up to 2010) "dived into" and "dove into" are basically neck-and-neck in American English, while "dove into" is barely even represented in British English.


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## bennymix

Thanks, James.  For BE, that confirms my estimate of 5% usage of 'dove'.    Conclusion:  Rather infrequent;  perhaps enough to be 'non-standard.'  (Ignoring the various qualifications that have been proposed, regarding the author's bio.)


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## Andygc

The 4 examples of dove used as a verb in the BNC are from:
_Old serpent Nile. A journey to the source_, by Stanley Stewart
_The Redundancy of Courage_, by Timothy Mo. An Anglo-Chinese (Welsh-Yorkshire mother and a Hong Kong Chinese father), educated at Mill Hill School and St John's College, Oxford, so well-protected from any insidious AE influence. 
_The Scotsman_: News and features. I cannot find the original text.
A recorded conversation, speaker unknown.

bennymix has found a perfectly valid example from a native Briton (Melissa Reid, born in Nottinghamshire, resident in Cornwall, interviewed by the Cornish Guardian) (although his link is a dud, I did find the article).

I think attempts to talk it off as an aberration under outside influence are somewhat pointless. The use of "dove" does exist in BE, and it is recorded by the OED as being present in some dialects. My first thought was "it's AE" but on reflection I realised that I have heard it on the lips of BE speakers. I suspect that bennymix's 5% figure is on the high side, although the Google Books ngram natkretep linked to suggests that we shall see it more often.


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## Myridon

According to etymonline, "dive" was a strong verb in Old English so at some point, it must have become a weak verb (an -ed verb).  I'm imaging a room of scholars in the Middle Ages complaining about people saying "dived" as much as we are complaining about "dove".


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## bennymix

Thanks Andy,
For readers of this thread, here is a new link to the Melissa Reid story,
http://www.cornishguardian.co.uk/minutes-Melissa-Reid/story-19815845-detail/story.html

Andy  





> I think attempts to talk it off as an aberration under outside influence are somewhat pointless.



Indeed.  Your forthrightness is appreciated.  Digging up bios to prove lack of taint to diehards gets tedious.   It's hard to establish the purity of all four grandparents, lack of residence abroad and of cosmopolitan friends.

But here is the bio for my other link,

My other example  ("I dove into the poll results") was from a _Guardian_ "Datablog" authored
by David McCandless, who furnished a link to his website 
and this information.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/about/



> Hello
> 
> I’m David McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer. I’ve written for The Guardian, Wired and others. I’m into anything strange and interesting.
> 
> These days I’m an independent data journalist and information designer. A passion of mine is visualizing information – facts, data, ideas, subjects, issues, statistics, questions – all with the minimum of words.







=======


Andygc said:


> The 4 examples of dove used as a verb in the BNC are from:
> _Old serpent Nile. A journey to the source_, by Stanley Stewart
> _The Redundancy of Courage_, by Timothy Mo. An Anglo-Chinese (Welsh-Yorkshire mother and a Hong Kong Chinese father), educated at Mill Hill School and St John's College, Oxford, so well-protected from any insidious AE influence.
> _The Scotsman_: News and features. I cannot find the original text.
> A recorded conversation, speaker unknown.
> 
> bennymix has found a perfectly valid example from a native Briton (Melissa Reid, born in Nottinghamshire, resident in Cornwall, interviewed by the Cornish Guardian) (although his link is a dud, I did find the article).
> 
> I think attempts to talk it off as an aberration under outside influence are somewhat pointless. The use of "dove" does exist in BE, and it is recorded by the OED as being present in some dialects. My first thought was "it's AE" but on reflection I realised that I have heard it on the lips of BE speakers. I suspect that bennymix's 5% figure is on the high side, although the Google Books ngram natkretep linked to suggests that we shall see it more often.


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## JamesM

PaulQ said:


> You should submit your 1836 finding to the OED. It predates their earliest by 19 years:



Actually, I found an earlier one: 1828.  I'm surprised that I can find something earlier than the OED's first citation.  That's fairly rare, isn't it?

http://books.google.com/books?id=i_...d=0CDsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q="dove into"&f=false


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## JamesM

Keith Bradford said:


> I've just looked further into this (_Shorter OED_). Apparently, there were two verbs in Old English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon): the strong verb _dufan, _to duck or sink_, _with the past tense _deaf_; and the weak verb _dyfan_, past tense _dyfde_, to submerge.



etymonline.com includes "to dive" as one of the meanings for dufan.  



> I agree with GreenWhiteBlue (#10): "I see no reason to inflict irregularity upon it unncecessarily". That's not an argument from etymology, just an argument for common sense.



I wonder if you feel the same about "dreamt" and "burnt".  Does common sense have you adopt the regular "dreamed" and "burned"?  

I think this argument of "common sense" quite often means "speak as I do".  Common sense is as inconsistent as the language itself, in my experience.  Two people will agree that one opinion is "common sense" and disagree violently on another opinion being "common sense".


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## BonanzaTree

< This thread has been added to a previous thread.  Please scroll up and read from the top. Cagey, moderator. >

I really prefer the word dived but is it normally used in American English among young people? Since the word dove isn't common in BrE people sometimes don't understand it so it is okay just to say dived all the time?


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## e2efour

One reference (Algeo, British or American English, 2006) says:

"dive/dived Dive/dove: CIC has 70 times as many tokens of _dived _as of _dove_ in  British texts, but only 1.6 times as many in American texts."

(CIC = Cambridge International Corpus)


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## Loob

_*Re post 54*_

As to whether it's OK to just say "dived" - that's what I'd recommend.  But I'm not a young American.


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## bennymix

Update.  "Dove" does seem rather unusual in BE, in regard to the phrase,  "dove at the ball."   My Google search found dozens of AE cases, and only one British case (pasted second, below), in the first few pages of hits.   I've pasted a typical American case, first.

*Soccer's All-Time UPSET - Los Angeles Times*
_https://www.latimes.com › archives › la-xpm-2000-jul-02-sp-47138-story_

Jul 2, 2000 - “Whether he dove over, through or around somebody, he _dove at the ball_, and he got a piece of it. He deflected it, redirected it, I don't know.
===============

*Jahns: Why Chuck Pagano echoes Tom Thibodeau with 'do ...*

_https://theathletic.co.uk › 2019/10/26 › jahns-why-chuck-pagano-echoes-to..._

Oct 26, 2019 - Instead of tackling Bridgewater short of the first down, Mack _dove at the ball_ and missed. It allowed Bridgewater to run on and eventually tumble ...


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## Loob

Well, your second quote doesn't seem _very _British, benny.


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## kentix

I believe I mostly use dove.

To me "dived" (as in "I dived in the pool") has the same "sound" as "I eated the food".


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## Andygc

Loob said:


> Well, your second quote doesn't seem _very _British, benny.


Hmm. Indeed. If it's supposed to be an example of BE, it contains an awful lot of spelling mistakes.


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## bennymix

kentix said:


> I believe I mostly use dove.
> 
> To me "dived" (as in "I dived in the pool") has the same "sound" as "I eated the food".



I think I used to say 'dove', but 50 years in English Canada has shifted my speech.   Isn't it odd that the Americans have the strong form--presumably preserving it-- while the British went to weak.  ("Dived" in AE sounds, as you say, like a kid who's is overly stuck on one basic rule (the 'weak verb' rule).


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## Loob

bennymix said:


> ...  the Americans have the strong form--presumably preserving it-- while the British went to weak.


Seemingly not, benny: see Keith's post 21.


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## KHS

I redid my old corpus search, this time using a part-of-speech tag (which I should have done the first time, except I don't think I knew how, then).  Now, in COCA:
882 - dove
741 - dived
While in the BNC:
6 - dove
427 - dived
What I'm wondering, though, is whether AmE reverts to "dived" for the past participle (as may BrE), thus skewing my results to some extent.  I don't know how to rule that out.


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