English Language Learners Asked on October 1, 2021
In one episode of the TV show Sherlock, Holmes and a prisoner has a conversation where Holmes corrected him grammatically many times. The following is just part of that.
Prisoner: (annoyed) Did it! STABBED HER! Over, and over, and over, and
I looked down and she weren’t… (Sherlock just sighs) …wasn’t… moving
no more… (Sherlock rolls his eyes) …anymore. (calmer) God help me, I
don’t know how it happened, it was an accident, I swear! (Sherlock
gets up to leave) Hey, you gotta help me, Mr. Holmes! Everyone says
you’re the best. Without you… I’ll get hung for this.
Sherlock: No,
no, Mr. Bewick, not at all. (beat) Hanged, yes.
According to Cambridge Dictionary, both "hung" and "hanged" could be the participle form of "hang"
Why Sherlock insists "hanged" there?
Although this is more a matter of style than definition, the stylistic convention is that you always use hung unless you are describing a person (or I suppose animal) who has been killed by hanging—in which case it should be hanged.
This is what Merriam-Webster says about it in "Is it 'Hung' or 'Hanged'?":
The standard rule for the past tense of hang is this: in almost all situations, you should use the word hung.
I hung a picture of Noah Webster on the wall.
After school, she hung out in the library.Use hanged when referring to a person being suspended by a rope around the neck until dead.
The Salem "witches" were not burned; they were hanged.
Justice Wargrave ordered Edward Seton to be hanged by the neck until dead.It's not that simple, however: most usage guides reserve hanged for people subjected to death, which means if an inanimate object is suspended from a gallows, the correct term is hung.
Despised by the voters, he was hung in effigy.
To further illustrate this point, I wrote a short piece of fiction a while ago (I will emphasize the words):
The paintings of hanged corpses all hung in the gallery. As the exhibit was also a piece of performance art, the artist had put a noose around his neck and hung himself on the wall as well. Unfortunately, a spectator noticed that he was no longer breathing. When the police were called, they had no choice but to file a report about the man who’d both hung himself on purpose and hanged himself by mistake.
Correct answer by Jason Bassford on October 1, 2021
If you check the dictionary entry that you quoted, you will see that hung is used for suspending things, but hanged is not. The entry for killing people states that both hanged and hung are possible, but it doesn't make it clear that hanged is a lot more common.
This Ngram graph shows that, in British English, hanged is much more common, and in the 19th century, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was writing, it was a lot more common than hung.
You can read more about it here.
Remember, though, that this is a 21st century representation of a 19th century representation of an imaginary dialogue. The reason that Sherlock corrected this is that the script writer (and possibly also Conan Doyle) decided that he should do it.
Answered by JavaLatte on October 1, 2021
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