Talk:plead

pleaded vs. pled

Any idea when the simple past is pleaded and when it's pled? JillianE 17:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I find

• The Advanced Learners Dictionary of Current English giving the past tense and past participle as pleaded or (USA) plead (/pled/)
• Pons English<->German Großwörterbuch giving the past tense and past participle as pleaded or (Scot, USA) pled (/pled/)

Ncik 02:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Pled is always wrong

The past tense and past participle of "plead" is "pleaded". There is no "pled". This entry should be updated to reflect that. Yes, apparently there are or were a few Scotsmen (and unfortunately, a lot of Americans) who think that because "plead" resembles the Anglo-Saxon words "bleed", "feed", "flee" and so on, that it is declined the same way. Actually, "plead" is not an Anglo-Saxonism - it comes from Old French. It is declined as a weak regular verb - by adding -ed. Just because one word resembles other words doesn't mean it is declined the same way (always a dangerous assumption when dealing with the English language). Bottom line, "pled" is wrong and should never be used.

That sounds pretty POV to me...pretty CW/UK POV to be specific. "He pled guilty" appears in writing here in the US every day. Do you have citations from official usage guides you'd like to add into a ===Usage note=== section here? Please be sure to indicate your usage note is UK-specific. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:27, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the first entry, but verbs are *conjugated*. Nouns are declined. 88.14.200.129 13:18, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Pled has been noted since ME: Þis Agamundus to þe abbay of Wylton had gret enuy..& long for hit, for-sothe, he pladde. — Life of Saint Edith of Wilton. I put a quote in the citations tab. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! (talk) 02:37, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

AnWulf is correct, the alternative form pled has nothing much to do with Anglo-Saxon, but was a common mode of forming past tenses in Middle English (pleden [stem pled-] + -de = pledde > (deprecated template usage) pled), similar to sleep/slept, deal/dealt, mean/meant, weep/wept--all Middle English byspels of vowel shortening in closed syllables. Leasnam (talk) 19:40, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes. And it's also not true that all verbs from Old French are conjugated regularly. For example, "to catch" is from Old French, and I suppose there may be more examples. 90.186.83.39 16:49, 6 August 2021 (UTC)