I feel fortunate that I was born and raised speaking English. I feel fortunate that my mother (and therefore all my siblings) spoke the language well without being overly pedantic. I feel fortunate that I grew up in a home rife with books, music, more books, reading, costumes, stories, puppets, writing, ancient encyclopedias, giant dictionaries, atlases, art supplies, wordplay, really bad puns, wit, verbal swordplay, and serious literary nonsense like the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup:
Minister of Finance: Something must be done! War would mean a prohibitive increase in our taxes.
Chico: Hey, I got an uncle lives in Taxes.
Minister of Finance: No, I'm talking about taxes — money, dollars.
Chico: Dollars! There's-a where my uncle lives! Dollars, Taxes!
Having studied French and Latin, I am excessively grateful for not having had to learn English as a second or third language. As much as I adore using English, molding it, throwing it around, juggling with it, and shaping it like preposterous putty, I have never actually liked studying it academically, per se: too clinical. Too self-evident. Like dissecting the air I breathe or doing an MRI on a unicorn. No thanks.
I do enjoy researching usage, punctuation, comparing style guides, and nerding out over em and en dashes and discussing the fate of the semicolon. It stays, by the way.(Speaking of semicolons, I have a good friend whose significant other refers to their Lhasa Apso as “Half-an-Asshole” because the dog bit him once. He probably had it coming; and, as they say, sometimes an accusation is a confession. But I digress.)
I have massive respect for others who have to wade through our weird conjugations when learning English. All the mishmash and hundreds of bits of languages that have influenced or been subsumed by English must make it a nightmare to learn. There is an exception to every exception, it seems—including the rules about exceptions.
As writer James Nicolls has quipped (and I am quoting it in full, despite my feminist objections to the first sentence denigrating women in about fifteen different ways due to being forced to live in patriarchal societies, because the purity bit is important and I do not conveniently edit quotations):
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
This lingual thug is not without its rules, although such might only be valid as far as the end of the block, where another gang replaces them entirely. Or not.
That brings me to one irregular verb that I’m going to tag because its distortion has been driving me around the bend. It is commonly used, and usually badly. The worst is hearing it in a podcast or report: it beats up both my ears and my brain to the extent that I am writing an entire post about it. It is not a particularly complicated or fussy verb, and although irregular, it doesn’t have a million different iterations. It does not rival the confusion of something like lie and lay, the ubiquitous misuse of which I kind of understand—although with the number of people, dogs, and cats laying everywhere, we should be awash in eggs.
What is this bête noire? Shake. To shake, technically.
Maybe too many people have heard “All Shook Up,” so I blame The King for this one. No, not Charles-The-Not-Nearly-As-Cool-As-His-Badass-Mum, with the Usurper Lady Queen Rottweiler (with humble apologies to Rottweilers). THE King. Go ahead and click on the link for some nostalgia.
On balance, the Beatles sang “Twist and Shout,” managing to inoculate the popular population with correct usage: “Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now (shake it up baby)…” Ditto the link for nostalgia, and to hear Lennon belt it out with a raw, blues-tanged voice.
I dare anyone to lay odds on the relative popularity of The Beatles versus Elvis, so in my estimation, the influence of runaway superstar lyrics is a wash. Meanwhile, we’re all awash in being shook up, as though there is no extant freely-accessible published reference to the full conjugation of the verb to shake.
Therefore, when I hear this verb butchered, to include new and undiagnosed linguistic carbuncles, I am neither shaken nor stirred: just really annoyed, nauseated, and offended, if I am being honest.
October is just around the corner, so perhaps this horror show will make your skin crawl. Or leave you shaken’ in your boots. I’m going to toss in some other cringeworthy nasties, since it is that season! Just for fun, I’ve stirred in some correct examples.
I was so shook to hear how bad it rained.
He was so shook at how long the lines were.
That Stephen King book left me shaking in my boots!
All of us were completely shooken after that horror flick.
Bond is famous for the phrase, “Shaken, not stirred.”
Shake that paint can to make sure it’s mixed complete-like.
I was shooken to see so many downed trees.
The little kids were pretty shook up about the scary Hallowe’en ornaments.
The news shook me to the core.
The audience members were left with shooked looks on their face when the curtain fell.
I wonder why the puppy was shaking so much?
They shook the can of nuts to make sure they were mixed good.
They were shook up about the overgrown lot next door.
She was shaken to see how well her book sold.
As the anxious novice peered down the ski hill, his legs were shooking like crazy.
It was so cold out, they’d been shaking since the sun went down.
She had shook him awake.
You wait and see if that post doesn’t shaken the internet.
He was so shook to hear about the movie version.
She shook with anticipation.
As a public service, I hereby make available to all and sundry the humble, much-mangled verb to shake. I didn’t bother with the rest of the pronouns, because this verb is pretty consistent for being so irregular, with a few exceptions. Here is a link for those who can’t look away.
Infinitive - to shake
Past Participle - shaken
Present Participle - shaking
Present - I shake
Present Continuous - I am shaking
Present Perfect - I have shaken
Present Perfect Continuous - I have been shaking
Past - I shook
Past Continuous - I was shaking
Past Perfect - I had shaken
Past Perfect Continuous - I had been shaking
Future - I will shake
Future Continuous - I will be shaking
Future Perfect - I will have shaken
Future Perfect Continuous - I will have been shaking
There it is, by shook or by crook.
Maybe shook is a portmanteau of sheep + crook, and shaken is sheep + taken.
Yes. I’ll have my martini taken by sheep, not stirred.
Thanks for shakin’ it at the Verbihund Café!
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I never cease to be amazed by the way your mind works. This was so much fun :-) Have you heard of this guy? He reminds me a bit of you: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1724833948277525?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v
You may not have enjoyed studying English, but I'd sit in on any English lecture you give, any time. Just let me know!!
Could Elvis have been shook by how fast he fell in love?