"Hanged" vs "Hung"

[HornungTheHelpful]

I've noticed recently that it appears to be increasingly common to refer to a person as having been "hung" rather than "hanged". I find it really jarring. OED Online confirms that "hung" is not the past tense of "hang" where it refers to the punishment of hanging.

Presumably at some point the OED will embrace it so I may as well get used to it now. But AIBU to ask if anyone else finds it a jarring form of speech? (please take as read all of the necessary caveats about how it's a nice problem to have, if it bothers me I should just ignore it, why am I such a snob about language, I've started a sentence with a conjunction so can I really criticise etc, etc).

Also pretty sure it was "hanged, drawn and quartered", too.
Poster above is correct. You are 'hung, drawn and quartered' because you are not hanged until you are dead. Being taken down before you died was part of the punishment so you were still alive for the drawing and quartering.

Thank you for explaining that.

I knew it was hanged for execution by hanging but don't why it was hung drawn and quartered ( only recently what that actually meant in practise which may explain my confusion)

I've always read and heard hung drawn and quartered - but google also comes up with hanged drawn and quartered in early search results for that term - so perhaps it should be hanged drawn and quartered like some PP are suggesting.

My teacher's version was "People are hanged, pictures are hung". I can still hear Miss Smith now!

Where do you stand on hunged

Glad to see 93% agree with the OP.

I’d really like to see some authoritative documentation for this assertion.

Unfortunately, I was the pedantic tw££; hysterical in-law rang to say relative had hung themselves and I said you mean 'Hanged'?

I don’t have easy access to a reference library that might have history books that refer to “hung” being used. But this is certainly what I was taught at school when studying William Wallace (90s, Scotland).

I found this on Wikipedia and here a historian seems to say “hung” and “hanged” were both used but I can’t see the original source online.

Historian Ram Sharan Sharmaarrived at the same conclusion: "Where, as in the popular hung, drawn and quartered [use] (meaning facetiously, of a person, completely disposed of), drawn follows hanged or hung, it is to be referred to as the disembowelling of the traitor."[38]

The Wallace Monument website also uses both “hung” and “hanged”.

I wince at this too.

Hanged for criminals, hung for game-birds such as grouse.

It's when the BBC start doing it that we know the rot has set in (no pun intended), and they have.

Also - I hate hearing 'He was stood on the pavement' when it should be he was 'standing'. If he was 'stood' on the pavement, he'd have to be dead or unconscious in some way and someone would have to have stood him there, like a shop-window dummy. Simliarly: I was sat on the bed. No! You were sitting on the bed. And 'I was laying on the bed'. No- surely you were lying on the bed, unless you are a nesting bird.

Feel better now.

Well, certainly it’s archaic as a punishment in the UK. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t used elsewhere in the world, or that people are not hanged - I imagine most commonly by their own hand - in the UK regularly.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/hung-or-hanged#:~:text=The%20standard%20rule%20for%20the,around%20the%20neck%20until%20dead.

The past tense of hang in almost all situations is hung. You hung a picture on the wall yesterday, or you hung out at the mall last week. Only use hanged when referring to someone being sentenced to death via hanging.

...

It's not that simple, however: most usage guides reserve hanged for people subjected to death, which means if an inanimate object is suspended from a gallows, the correct term is hung.
Despised by the voters, he was hung in effigy.
A stripped-down version of why we have these two different words is that the word hang came from two different verbs in Old English (and possibly also one from Old Norse). One of these Old English verbs was what we might think of as a regular verb, and this gave rise to hanged; the other was irregular, and ended up becoming hung.
Hanged and hung were used interchangeably for hundreds of years, although over time the one from the irregular verb (hung) eventually became the more common one. Hanged retained its position when used to refer to death by hanging, possibly due to being favored by judges who were passing a sentence. However, both forms are commonly found, and both are commonly found used in either sense.

So looks like EngineEngineNumber9 is right they are both used for hanging from gallows but not dying.

If you were describing someone who had completed suicide by hanging would you say they hung themself or hanged themself?

A recent annoyance I've come across is: 'he pled guilty'.

I don't know if it's the American word for the past tense of plead but it seems to be cropping up all over the place.

It would be hanged.

Which side of the fence do you fall on that last sentence...?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plead#:~:text=Though%20still%20sometimes%20criticized%2C%20it,is%20used%20with%20greater%20frequency.

Pleaded vs. Pled
Plead belongs to the same class of verbs as bleed, lead, and feed, and like them it has a past and past participle with a short vowel spelled pled (or sometimes plead, which is pronounced alike).

From the beginning, pled has faced competition from the regular form pleaded, which eventually came to predominate in mainstream British English. Pled was and is used in Scottish English, which is likely how it came to American English.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pled was attacked by many American usage commentators (perhaps because it was not in good British use). Though still sometimes criticized, it is fully respectable today and both pled (or plead) and pleaded are in good use in the U.S. In legal use (such as “pleaded guilty,” “pled guilty”), both forms are standard, though pleaded is used with greater frequency. In nonlegal use (such as “pleaded for help”), pleaded appears more commonly, though pled is also considered standard.

I mentally correct people when they use 'hung', many years ago I used that and a work colleague corrected me in front of everyone, I felt embarrassed so I've never got it wrong since!

Washing, pheasants and curtains are hung up. Peasants are strung up and once they're dead they're hanged. Or at least that was what I was taught. (On the basis that aristos were beheaded.)

'I text' - present tense.
'I texted' - past tense.

On no planet on which I have to spend my time should the use of 'text' as the past tense of 'to text' ever be acceptable.

when I was younger that it was disrespectful to refer to a person as being “hung” like meat,

I believe most men would be quite happy if the meat concerned was a donkey.....

I work in a school so spend a lot of time correcting children who watch too much American television 😂

my current annoyances are
schedule pronounced sked-ule instead of shed-ule

flavourful instead of flavoursome

Please may you lend me a pencil/please may you tell me….

This is a hill on which I will absolutely die.

The well-hung man, who hung a picture wrongly was hanged.

@SmileyHappyPeopleInTheSun Thank you for that.

I will still never use pled, it sounds very odd to my ear I'm afraid.

As I say, it's only very recently that I've come across it.