# Snuck?



## Riptide (Apr 15, 2014)

Is snuck a word? It keeps coming up red when I write it, and looking it up doesn't help because I keep getting two different sides.


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## ViKtoricus (Apr 15, 2014)

Definition by Merriam-Webster...

Past and past participle of sneak.



So I think, yes, it is a word.


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## A_Jones (Apr 15, 2014)

Actually no, it is only colloquial.  The actual word is sneaked.


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## ViKtoricus (Apr 15, 2014)

A_Jones said:


> Actually no, it is only colloquial.  The actual word is sneaked.



How come it's in Merriam-Webster?


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## A_Jones (Apr 15, 2014)

Because it is colloquial.


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## InstituteMan (Apr 15, 2014)

"Snuck" is totally a word in my dialect. I am pretty sure "snuck" ain't a word in other dialects, such as those where "ain't" is not a word.


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## Riptide (Apr 15, 2014)

So if I wrote it in a novel or short story sent off to be published it wouldn't get accepted? I sneaked behind someone... I snuck behind someone...


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## A_Jones (Apr 15, 2014)

If you are asking if it is okay to put into literature, then yes, based on a colloquial nature.  However, you would get your work thrown in the garbage if you tried to put it in anything formal or non fiction.

It especially works in the first person tense.


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## ViKtoricus (Apr 15, 2014)

Well, I'm gonna have to say to agree on A-Jones on this one.

I know a man when he knows his stuff. :sunny:


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## A_Jones (Apr 15, 2014)

...or woman.


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## ViKtoricus (Apr 15, 2014)

A_Jones said:


> ...or woman.



I could have sworn I saw a post of yours where you said something like, "I have a wife."

I could be wrong and you may have just said, "I have a spouse." Or simply, a fiancé/fiancée. I can't remember.

PM me your true sex please. (I don't like labeling "sex" as "gender." Gender means something else.)


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## Bishop (Apr 15, 2014)

ViKtoricus said:


> I could have sworn I saw a post of yours where you said something like, "I have a wife."
> 
> I could be wrong and you may have just said, "I have a spouse." Or simply, a fiancé/fiancée. I can't remember.
> 
> PM me your true sex please. (I don't like labeling "sex" as "gender." Gender means something else.)



A_Jones is a girl. And I'm not an expert on all of her posts, but I'm pretty sure she's unwed.


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## T.S.Bowman (Apr 15, 2014)

Poor Vik. He can't catch a break today. LOL


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## Phoenix Raven (Apr 16, 2014)

When I use "snuck" it's in dialog since characters often speak informally or in fragments. I would use the formal word in prose.


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## Sam (Apr 16, 2014)

It's an informal and chiefly North American colloquial term. The correct construct is 'sneaked'.


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## garza (Apr 16, 2014)

If a writer has used it in a published work, it's a word. That's how new words are discovered. If enough writers like the new word and start using it, then it will show up in the next edition of a dictionary. If its popularity continues to grow the new word may make it all the way to the top and be listed for inclusion in the next edition of the OED.

Dictionary makers don't invent words. New words are discovered by writers who need a word that's not yet been used.


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## A_Jones (Apr 16, 2014)

Both my sex and my gender are female.  I do have a fiance, and a baby girl.  No worries, I called Pluralized a queen.  hehe.  Its easy to mistake this stuff online.


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## Kevin (Apr 16, 2014)

> called Pluralized a queen


 been called worse I spect.


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## Bloggsworth (Apr 16, 2014)

Don't you start - I have friend who gets positively apoplectic about the word - He considers that it has no place in anybody's dictionary, let alone the English one...


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## Gamer_2k4 (Apr 16, 2014)

Drat, I see I'm late to the party on this one.

In case the others weren't convincing enough for you, the proper word is "sneaked."


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## garza (Apr 18, 2014)

gamer_2k4 - What do you mean, 'proper word'? The proper word is the word that precisely fits the context. To say that colloquial words are not 'proper' is to deny a big part of the English vocabulary. My son at age ten, still under the influence of his mother's Marion County family, would never have said 'sneaked'. 

'Why were you up so early?'
'I snuck out to see the puppies.'

A neighbour's beagle had given birth the day before, leading to this conversation and to a month-long battle over whether we were to adopt one of the newborn hounds. If I'm to quote David accurately and capture the flavour of his speech, I must use the words he used. 

Or would you revise Twain so that Huck and Jim spoke only in a 'proper' way?


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## A_Jones (Apr 18, 2014)

As stated before, Garza, we acknowledge 'snuck' as a colloquial dialogue based word, or a word used in first person narratives.  However, it seems many of us are in agreement that there is little place for the word in a formal narrative.


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## garza (Apr 18, 2014)

Here's what I wrote.

'The proper word is the word that precisely fits the context.' (To correct a usage error here, the 'precisely' is redundant. Either a word fits the context or it does not. Therefore the insertion of 'precisely' is an error.)

In formal writing the word that fits the context is 'sneaked'. To make the statement that 'sneaked' is the 'proper' word, without qualification is to dismiss colloquial speech in whatever context as improper.


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## A_Jones (Apr 18, 2014)

I can understand what you are saying, but at this point I feel we are arguing semantics.  I do so hate semantics.


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## garza (Apr 18, 2014)

And I, on the other hand, love semantic discussions, which I do not consider arguments but rather a refining our our mutual understanding of the meaning of a word. These are the kinds of discussions I had with my grandfather at the dinner table when I was a child. By the the time my grandfather died when I was ten he had embedded in me a delight in discovering the meaning of words and the way they are to be used. My grandfather gets all the credit for any skill I have as a writer. My regret is that he did not live to see me turn what he taught into a life-long vocation.


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## Sam (Apr 18, 2014)

It's something akin to writing 'alright'. 

There is no such word in the modern compendium of English language. By the same token, there is no such word as 'snuck'. It is a colloquial term used in colloquial tongue. If you look it up in the dictionary, you _may _come on it. That's all well and fine. You'll also come on the word 'informal' in lights beside it.


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## Kevin (Apr 18, 2014)

mmm... I wonder if the Anatolians worry at the Turkmenistan dictionary? Progression, modernity vs. yurt-living; dynamism or backwater? We're starting a world trend. From now on the word is 'snucked'. Because we say so...


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## Riptide (Apr 18, 2014)

Snucked it is then? We all agree?


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