In today's episode, Hulk Hogan takes his grandnephew Winky on a tour of the Verb Gym...

Hulk: Look! My ol' verb buddies "be," "ring" and "break" are over there lifting power weights. These strong verbs are powerful enough to change their spelling when they shift tenses, e.g., is/was, been; ring/rang/rung; break/broke/broken. Look at those verbal muscles ripple! Whoyaa!

Winky: Why are they so strong, Uncle Hulk?

Hulk: They're tough old words derived from verbs that existed in Old English. Because they describe some of our most common actions — eat/ate, sit/sat, run/ran, say/said, see/saw — they're used frequently, so we all have plenty of practice at mastering their different tense forms.

Winky: Who are those skinny words sitting around on benches?

Hulk: Those are the weak verbs — the 97-pound weaklings not strong enough to change their spelling for different tenses. Nearly all verbs that entered English after 1100 are weak verbs.

These softies meekly add "-ed" to their endings to form the past tense, e.g., stomp/stomped, pound/pounded, slam/slammed. Hmmm ... Why am I suddenly thinking of my former wrestling days? And almost all verbs coined in recent decades are weak: text/texted, dis/dissed. Newbie wimps!

Winky: Is it true that some weak verbs were once strong?

Hulk: Sadly, it is. My Old English friend "helpan" (help), for instance, was once the husky "healp" in the past tense and "hulpon" in the past participle. In fact, back then we called him "The Incredible Healp." But during the last few centuries, he's degenerated into the feeble milksop "help/helped."

Winky: But haven't some weak verbs become strong?

Hulk: You betcha! By purchasing my special video series "Become a Strong Verb in a Century or Less" (1-800-BIG-VERB), formerly weak verbs like wear/weared, dig/digged and fling/flinged pumped up their past tense forms into the hunks we know today: wore, dug, flung.

Winky: But aren't some verbs both weak and strong?

Hulk: It happens. That's why a person is "hanged" but a picture is "hung," why you "shined" your shoes while the sun "shone," and why the seal either "dived" or "dove" into the water.

Winky: Are there any verbs that don't change at all when they're used in the past tense?

Hulk: Plenty! These include cost, cut, fit, hit, hurt, let, put, shut, set, shed, slit and split, e.g., "Split this doughnut in two/I just split this doughnut in two.

Winky: Can I have the other half?

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to WordGuy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

Photo credit: Jonathan Borba at Unsplash