An English Mutilator nearly ruined my winter vacation this year. MG’s high school classmates, MG and I shared a rental home in Florida for a week. The house was lovely, the weather was gorgeous, the company was terrific, and the attractions we visited were interesting and entertaining. We were having a fabulous time, and then one evening I decided to do some laundry. Huge mistake.

It was hidden at first, this serpent in the Garden of Eden. A pile of folded towels blocked the diabolical missive from view. I lifted the towels off the clothes dryer to set them aside, and then and there it assaulted my vision and attacked my sensibilities. The offensive object was a printed note from the cleaning service that was taped to the top of the dryer. I recoiled at the sight of it. The note began with the most blatant of errors. The horror! The rest of the note was unintelligible in places. I nearly wept for an American public school system that produced such incompetence.

I did my laundry, averting my eyes the entire time so as not to view that note from hell, but the damage had been done. I couldn’t get that mangled memo out of my mind. It haunted me. I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Knowing that satanic, error-ridden note existed, that it was out there in the laundry room mere steps from my bedroom, gnawed at me. I couldn’t let that attack on proper English slide. I needed to deal with it.

I had to make certain MG was asleep. His snoring confirmed it, so I slid out of bed cautiously, grabbed the little flashlight I always keep beside my bed, and slipped a pen out of my purse. I tiptoed to the laundry room. I felt a rush of adrenalin as I corrected the cleaning service’s error that tasked me the most. I couldn’t resist taking a photo of my handiwork as a trophy commemorating my victory over illiteracy.

Afterward, I walked on air as I sneaked back to bed. I slept like a baby, a very content English Major baby.

Snuck.

I have no love for that ungainly and ungrammatical word, and I cannot abide its use. Just the sound of it makes my flesh crawl. For the life of me I cannot fathom how it managed to smuggle itself into the English lexicon.

I would love to travel back in time to meet the first person to use snuck instead of sneaked as the past and past participle of sneak. No, I would not shoot him or even slap him upside the head—I’m not a violent person—but I would wash his mouth out with soap for using foul language and convince him of the error of his ways.

Snuck makes no sense when you conjugate sneak. It should be sneak, sneaks, sneaking, sneaked, has sneaked, have sneaked, and so on. Snuck doesn’t fit the pattern: sneak, sneaks, sneaking, snuck—huh? No, no, no! What happened to eaked and where did uck come from? Unfortunately, no one seems to know. Even more unfortunately, no one seems to care.

Well, I care. So, let’s conduct a little experiment, shall we? I’m going to write a short paragraph using the past tense of verbs that end in eak. I’ll write it two ways. First, I’ll write it using the standard past tense for each verb that ends with the letters eak. Next, I’ll write it using a nonstandard uck tense for each verb ending in eak. Got it?

Standard: The kitchen door hinge squeaked while she was watching her favorite TV show. She turned down the volume and peaked over her shoulder. She was sure she locked that door. The kitchen floor’s loose boards creaked ominously under the weight of someone’s feet. Her face was streaked with tears. Someone had definitely sneaked into her house. She freaked out and called 9-1-1.

Nonstandard: The kitchen door hinge squuck while she was watching her favorite TV show. She turned down the volume and puck over her shoulder. She was sure she locked that door. The kitchen floor’s loose boards cruck ominously under the weight of someone’s feet. Her face was struck with tears. Someone had definitely snuck into her house. She fruck out and called 9-1-1.

See what I mean? If none of those eak verbs are acceptable or intelligible with an uck past tense, why should any English speaking human willingly accept snuck as the past tense of sneak?

For years, the Oxford Dictionary of English stood firm against snuck. The Oxford defied the conjugationally challenged masses and defended the purity of the English language from the barbarians at the gate who would savage it. The Oxford refused admittance to snuck. Thank Heaven for the Brits.

Here in the States, the Webster Dictionary people caved early on to vulgate usage. Webster’s included snuck in its pages as the accepted past tense of sneak. For shame, Webster’s, for shame. I hope Noah Webster never suffered from motion sickness, for surely he is spinning in his grave.

Here’s how the Oxford American Dictionary explains the usage of sneaked vs. snuck.

“The traditional standard past form of sneak is sneaked (she sneaked around the corner). An alternative past form, snuck (she snuck past me), arose in the U.S. in the 19^th century. Until very recently, snuck was confined to U.S. dialect use and was regarded as nonstandard, but in the last few decades its use has spread, particularly in the U.S., where it is now generally regarded as a standard alternative to sneaked. In formal contexts, however, sneaked remains the preferred form.”

I definitely prefer sneaked to snuck. I only wish I were not in the minority. I am disheartened to report that the Oxford Dictionary of English (the British version) in a recent edition sounded an alarming note in its description of usage regarding sneaked vs. snuck:

“In the Oxford Reading Programme, there are now more US citations for snuck than there are for sneaked, and there is evidence of snuck gaining ground in British English also.”

Please say it isn’t so, Oxford. After learning that snuck is gaining ground in England, I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

Oh, the humanity. Wasn’t including ain’t in the dictionary more than enough for the English language to bear?