{"id":441,"date":"2008-12-09T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T18:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/you-will-not-feel-any-air-being-blowned\/"},"modified":"2011-05-31T19:49:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T01:49:00","slug":"you-will-not-feel-any-air-being-blowned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/12\/you-will-not-feel-any-air-being-blowned\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;&#8230; you will not feel any air being blowned &#8230;&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I saw this on a website this morning.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Problem:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe past participle is a nonsense word.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Explanation:<\/strong><br \/>\nI was researching which way a ceiling fan should turn in the winter versus the summer when I discovered this.<\/p>\n<p>The <a target=\"_fans\" href=\"http:\/\/wiki.answers.com\/Q\/Which_way_should_ceiling_fans_turn_in_the_summer_and_winter\">full sentence<\/a> was &#8220;In the winter, you will not feel any air being blowned to you since it will be pulled up to the ceiling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, seeing the past participle of the verb &#8220;blow&#8221; as B-L-O-W-N-E-D is essentially humorous, but there is instructional value in discussing this blunder.<\/p>\n<p>The verb &#8220;blow&#8221; has these basic forms:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Blow<\/strong> &#8212; present simple, as in &#8220;The fan at top speed can blow the dust away.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Blew<\/strong> &#8212; preterite, as in &#8220;He blew up the balloon.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Blown<\/strong> &#8212; past participle, as in &#8220;She has blown it out of proportion.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Blowing<\/strong> &#8212; present continuous, as in &#8220;The wind is not blowing.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A common English blunder for young children and for those who are learning English as a second language is to write or say &#8220;blowed&#8221; &#8212; spelled B-L-O-W-E-D &#8212; as the preterite or past participle of the verb &#8220;blow&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the blunder is to add E-D to the present simple form because many preterites and past participles are formed in this way. For example, the verb &#8220;form&#8221; has &#8220;formed&#8221; &#8212; spelled F-O-R-M-E-D &#8212; as its preterite and as its past participle.<\/p>\n<p>Here are examples of use of the nonsense word &#8220;blowed&#8221;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>As a preterite:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;He blowed up at her.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The wind blowed last night!&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>As a past participle:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;She has blowed her chances.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;If you guys had not blowed the money in Atlantic City, you would not be begging me for a loan today.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;blew&#8221; &#8212; 19,800,000 matches<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;blown&#8221; &#8212; 33,100,000 matches<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;blowed&#8221; &#8212; 541,000 matches<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This tells me that Web authors have used the correct &#8220;blew&#8221; or the correct &#8220;blown&#8221; versus the incorrect &#8220;blowed&#8221; by a ratio of 36.6-to-1 or 61.1-to-1, respectively, each of which is very good, but over a half million instances of &#8220;blowed&#8221; is nothing about which to brag.<\/p>\n<p>Another blunder is to say or write &#8220;blown&#8221; as the preterite of the verb &#8220;blow&#8221;, as in &#8220;He blown it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I had never heard or seen the word &#8220;blowned&#8221; until today. I suppose that it would be reasonable to add E-D to the end of B-L-O-W-N, if someone believed that &#8220;blown&#8221; were the preterite &#8212; because some past participles are formed in this way.<\/p>\n<p>For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;blown&#8221; &#8212; 33,100,000 matches<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;blowned&#8221; &#8212; 86,400 matches<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This tells me that Web authors have used the correct &#8220;blown&#8221; versus the incorrect &#8220;blowned&#8221; by a ratio of 383-to-1, which is superb.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Solution:<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8220;&#8230; you will not feel any air being blown &#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I saw this on a website this morning. Problem: The past participle is a nonsense word. Explanation: I was researching which way a ceiling fan should turn in the winter versus the summer when I discovered this. The full sentence was &#8220;In the winter, you will not feel any air being blowned to you since&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,30,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-common-english-blunders","category-outsiders-perspective","category-verbs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&quot;... you will not feel any air being blowned ...&quot; - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/12\/you-will-not-feel-any-air-being-blowned\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;... you will not feel any air being blowned ...&quot; - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I saw this on a website this morning. 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