Hamstringed and Gaslighted

A Digression into Grammar

Warning: Esoterica ahead. Not safe for grammatiphobes!

It is quite common to hear (or read) hamstrung as the past tense of hamstring. It should not be. It is also quite common to hear (or read) gaslit as the past tense of gaslight. It should not be. I cite the following examples:

“A Hamstrung Supreme Court,” (New York Times, Oct. 2, 2018)

The 2024 movie, “Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story”

These verbs are actually derived from nouns—“verbified nouns,” if you would. Think of the verbs to telegraph, to carpool, to buttonhole, to warehouse, and to shoehorn—all originally nouns. Similarly, the verb to hamstring is derived from the noun, hamstring, which is actually the large sinew in the back of the hock of a quadruped. The verb to hamstring means to render an animal helpless by cutting this tendon, hence, to physically cripple or, metaphorically, to frustrate. Similarly, the verb to gaslight is based on the noun gaslight, or gas light, a street or house lamp fueled by gas. In the famous 1944 movie, Ingrid Bergman’s character, Paula, is manipulated into doubting her own sanity by dimming the gas lights, thus “gaslighting” her.

Since these words are not based, respectively, on the verbs to string and to light, their past tenses should not follow the “irregular” past tenses, strung and lit; rather, they should simply add the “regular” suffix, -ed: hamstringed and gaslighted. In the movie, the lamps may be gaslit (literally, lit by gas), but Paula is not lit by gas; she is gaslighted.

Think about it. One does not hear, “I read the report and I highlit the important sections for you.” There is absolutely no reluctance to say, “I highlighted.” [Even as I typed this paragraph, my computer rejected “highlit”!] This is because the verb is derived not from the verb to light but from the noun highlight.

The same reasoning applies to the verb to greenlight, a “verbified” form of the noun, green light (approval or “go-ahead”), as in “I greenlighted the project,” meaning that I gave it the green light. Yet we see the past tense rendered as greenlit:

In NY Times crossword puzzles, the clue “Green-lit” was offered for “OKED” (January 23, 2018) and for “OKD” (October 21, 2019), reasonable if the verb green-lit were actually related to the verb to light.

Kudos to the Wall Street Journal, which, in its crossword puzzles of January 8, 2019, May 15, 2020, July 7, 2020, and June 24, 2021, got it right: for the answer “OKD” or “OKED” it correctly used the clue, “Greenlighted.” Unfortunately, the Journal erred when a February 25, 2019, column included this: “Not a single [movie] would have even been greenlit without computer graphics.” Perhaps the JournaI editor should do more crossword puzzles!

When a batter hits a fly (ball) that is caught, he has flied out, right? Yet I heard on ESPN radio, August, 11, 2016: “A-Rod flew out …” This has also appeared in writing (Wall Street Journal, date uncertain): “. . . a home run by Mr. [Pete] Rose in that moment would have posted a score . . . Instead, Mr. Rose flew out.”

In this case, too, the past tense derives from the noun fly and not the verb to fly; the use of the irregular past tense of fly—flew—is as absurd as the visual image it evokes!

I contend that we should be rational in applying rules of grammar—neither hamstringed by thoughtless common usage nor gaslighted by dogmatic authority.