"dived" or "dove"?

[Babyface]

Hi everybody,

I was wondering if it's correct to use "dove" as the past tense of "dive"?

Is this one of those cases where English English and American English differentiate? if so, are both considered grammatically correct?

Thanks!

[Conchita]

That's right, Babyface, both 'dived' (BrE/AmE) and 'dove' (AmE) are correct.

[Jamie (K)]

When I'm not thinking about it, I probably use both "dived" and "dove", but if you asked me which one I prefer, and I had to think about it, I'd probably say that "dived" sounds more like children's speech, or uneducated speech, to me and that "dove" is better. Someone else probably has a different judgment.

[Babyface]

Thanks for the answers, I appreciate it!

[NinaZara]

[Jamie (K)]

[Geokrug]

[Jamie (K)]

"Dived" for the simple past always sounds uncultured to me, for some reason.

Here's what the Merriam-Webster dictionary has to say about it:

[Papin]

[AnWulf]

The common mythos is that Americans made up dove as a past tense but the truth is much easier. If you notice in OED, it states that some words like pled is mainly North American and Scottish ... there ya go!

Once again, the Scots have kept either an old verb (like umbeset - surround), an old verb form (like dove / doven), or just an old Anglo-Saxon word (like umbe - around) and brought it to the States while the English often swapped out the word for a Latinate.

That has happened with many words and a lot of usage. The US often, not always, keeps the older words, the older forms, and the older usage.

In Old English dive had two forms two, altho strongly akin: a strong, class II form dufan from which had a p.p. of dofen (OE didn't have the letter 'v' so here, f=v ... doven). From dufan we get dive, dove, doven and from the weak form dyfan we get dive, dived, dived. The strong form was intransitive, the weak was transitive (meaning to dip something), like: lie/lay, rise/raise, sit/set, fall/fell. In the UK the weak form survived, but with an intransitive meaning, but American and Scottish English keeps the strong form.

For me it's hard to say, "I had dove" without saying either "doved" or "doven" ... To say, "I had dove" requires, to me, an unnatural stop, it just begs for an ending. We know that doved is wrong so I use doven which, fits the wove, woven pattern. I just read a paper a few days ago on how folks find their way to usage with strong verbs and it talked about whether it should be doven or diven.

BTW, there is also the word bedoven from the ppl of bedive, meaning drenched or drowned. She was bedoven in blood.

So use dove and doven without angst!

If you want to have fun ... check out glide. It not only has a weak and a strong form, it has two strong forms! And they're all correct! It would be hard to go wrong with the past tense of glide! lol

[E2e4]

Was it ever "diveth"?

Thanks

[AnWulf]