Friday 13 April 2007

More bad language

One of the most abused words in the English language is done.
My dictionary says this is the past participle of the verb do. Briefly this means that it should only be used with another verb, to expand on its meaning.
I suppose that the most famous example is the Lord's Prayer 'Thy will be done'.
What it isn't is a verb. It is simply not correct English to say someone done something.
They may do something, or maybe they did something in the past, which they shouldn't have done.
Maybe this is too subtle, that last phrase looks the same as what I object to. The subtlety is that the verb in the phrase is 'have' not done.

I cringe every time I hear someone say things like I done the lottery, or the boy done good.
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