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Is "Shined" or "Shone" the Past Tense of "Shine"?
September 4, 2014
By Mignon Fogarty
It's time for the latest in our series of quick tips on usage and style shared by Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. Here Mignon tackles the question of whether the past-tense form of shine should be shined or shone.
- Grammar Girl shined her headlights at the abandoned house. (object)
- The light shone brightly. (no object)
The meaning matters too: shined is the only acceptable past tense when you mean "polished," as in "He shined his shoes."
What should you do? Stick with the traditional rule of using shined with an object and shone without an object unless you have a good reason to deviate.
Quick and dirty tip: The rhyme It's shone when alone will help you remember to use shone when the verb is alone (i.e., has no object).
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Comments from our users:
Well we wouldn't say he shoned his shoes... would we.
Love your addition to Visual Thesaurus.
Great to have this rule of thumb: "shone when alone."
I love to use the word "shone;" it rolls out of your mouth in much the same unusual way that "wont" (another favorite) does!
It's a good thing to notice what words please you to iterate because of how they feel in your mouth.
Joe Mc Kay, author, "Crazy About Words"... toasting our language since 2003!"
Please be advised that "shone" is pronounced differently in UK English (including many parts of Canada) than in the United States. In the US most dictionaries prescribe "shown," but you'll find it pronounced as "shawn" in UK English. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/british/shone The rule of thumb "shone when alone" is therefore helpful only stateside.
Blessings, The WordHawk
I grew up in the US Northeast. I would not use the form in the first example. I would have said "The girl shone her headlights on the abandoned house." I'd leave "shined" for the polishing.
As I read it, it immediately sounded wrong. Would shone have been a better choice? The sentence sounds better in my mind using shone.
"Madam Celebrity shone on the red carpet as our makeup ambassador."
This is why it drives me nuts when I am asked to perform "The Lighthouse" with my church choir. There is a line in the song that says, "He has shone a light around me..." Drives me nuts every time! (Even worse, when I looked up that lyric just now, the first hit I got on Google printed the same line as, "He has shown a light around me..." Grrr.)
Tuesday September 9th 2014, 2:48 PM
Dude, helping verbs modify the direct verb. In this case, "has" modifies "shined" into "shone" which the article writer made no mention of because she's a Millenial who doesn't really understand English grammar.