People are hanged, not hung

[BirdOfPassage]

Heard 'Voices from the Old Bailey' on Radio 4 today. Was astonished to hear all three presenters talking repeatedly of people being 'hung'. They are all experts in history of law or justice, so I can't believe they don't know the difference between 'hung' and 'hanged'. I am guessing that someone in the BBC may have decided that 'hung' is more in line with everyday talk. Pictures are hung, people are hanged. Is that so difficult?

Not difficult at all - and I notice too when people get it wrong.

Though it does seem to be the dominant usage in the full grisly "hung, drawn and quartered". Is that a free-standing phrase, or just perpetuation of error?

'hung' is entirely at odds with 'quartered' in that phrase. Mixing tenses to begin with. I am always careful to threaten dd with the correct usage when she doesn't clear her plate. She will be a better adult for it.

Hmm. Is it not 'hunged'?

No.

I imagine that hung slipped into that phrase purely because it is difficult to say hanged, drawn etc clearly.

Hang on (sorry) - "hung" and "hanged" indicate the same time, don't they?

I though they were both variants of the past participle:

to hang: it was hung, and he was hanged
to draw: his guts were drawn
to quarter: he was quartered

Hung drawn and quartered rather than hanged, because the unfortunate was taken down from the scaffold before death so that he could fully suffer the rest of the punishment. So, technically correct to say 'hung drawn and quartered'.

Edith's right, they are in effect the same tense. The difference is in the subject: people are hanged and pictures, game etc are hung.

also: lol at 'hang on'

isn't it that 'hung'(nothing to do with 'well hung', obv. ) is a sort of continuous past, so the picture is hung and remains so. Hanged is an event, so it occurs then stops being so?

Sod you Pan.

I was just about to ask what about well hung

Being well hung is clearly permanent fixture!

I think you're right about "hanged" referring only to the actual execution, and it doesn't have to possibility of a continuous sense.

I've always wondered about this (inasmuch as one can be said to 'always wonder' about methods of execution and still live a relatively normal life) as the hanged/hung, drawn and quartered issue seems to contradict itself. I've never bothered to look it up though. I should. I like the explanations here - but I wonder if 'hanged' forms part of a specialist vocabulary for the profession of executioner though, like 'defenestration' which was specifically 'death by being thrown out of a window'.

Is this the cheeriest pedants' corner discussion ever?

Hunged is such a good word though.

What would be the past tense of 'blows raspberries' be? Blewed raspberry's perhaps?

I think it must be socialist vocabulary for the specific method of execution with a rope round the neck. Two reasons: if it is a different context, you'd still use "hung" even for a person (eg Jesus hung from the Cross); and the words used when handing down the death sentence, which I can't remember verbatim, but think includes "you shall be taken from here and hanged".

< off to see if I can find the exact wording, I'll also look for a good link to explain the full horror of h,d&q as I don't fancy typing it out! >

I like hunged.

But I like thunk(ed) for think.

bollowed?

VictorianIce - Here's a link to middle-ages.org.uk which might make you wish you'd never wondered aloud about that particular method!

The actual words used in the sentencing to death were:

"(full name of prisoner) you will be taken hence to the prison in which you were last confined and from there to a place of execution where you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead and thereafter your body buried within the precincts of the prison and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul".

Indeed. Sometimes when I think my brain goes .

"socialist vocabulary" sorry, that was meant to be "specialist vocabulary".

Thanks for that very informative link, EdithWeston!
I am pleased to see the word 'hence' in in that quotation. I do like hence, thence and whence (and hither, thither and whither). It's always a shame when such pleasingly precise words fall out of use.

Interesting that the 'drawn' bit means being dragged to the place of execution. Shakespeare uses that in 'Romeo and Juliet' ("go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church,/Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither") and I'd never made the connection with the execution method before. But draw/drag presumably have the same root in Anglo-Saxon?

And if they were not hanged, they might go to gaol, not jail.....

When I were a child, I had only ever readed the word 'gaol' and I thunk that it were prounounciated gale. I thunk it were a old fashionered word for jail and jail were just a modren word.

The "drawn" bit isn't about being dragged to the place of execution, VictorianIce. "To draw" means "to remove the innards". It's still used now re game or poultry.

CleanSheetsAndSmoothLegs - the link I posted suggests there was some variation in practice. Versions including evisceration and emasculation (together with names of those sentenced to that) are also included.

Thanks Edith. But I don't think the "drawn" bit ever referred to dragging to the scaffold, did it? That's the point I was trying to make.