Kef, where does you mom stand on this one?
Is she going to be left behind by "progress"?
Extract from this page: http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2006/06/irregular-verbs-gotten-fit-knit.html
'Americans also have an irregular past/past participle for fit, but this one isn't so old.
US: Before he lost weight, the jacket (had) fit him.
UK: Before he lost weight, the jacket (had) fitted him.
In my dialect (or at least my idiolect!), we do use fitted when describing making something to measure. So:
US & UK: I had that jacket fitted. The tailor fitted me for a jacket.
But according to The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style by Bryan A. Garner, I'm part of a dying breed and others are using only fit as the past tense of fit:
"Just since the mid-20th century, AmE has witnessed a shift in the past tense and past participle from fitted to fit. Traditionally, fit would have been considered incorrect, but it began appearing in journalism and even scholarly writing as early as the 1950s.
...
The traditionally correct past tense still surfaces—especially in BrE—but in AmE it is becoming rarer (and stuffier) year by year: “A most interesting item in my coin collection is a disk that fitted the pressure-spray nozzle on our apple-orchard pump some 50 years ago” (Christian Science Monitor). Although fitted may one day be extinct as a verb form, it will undoubtedly persist as an adjective fitted sheets."
Presumably the irregulari(s/z)ation of fit is on analogy with hit, which does not change its form in the past or past participle in either dialect.'
Is she going to be left behind by "progress"?
Extract from this page: http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2006/06/irregular-verbs-gotten-fit-knit.html
'Americans also have an irregular past/past participle for fit, but this one isn't so old.
US: Before he lost weight, the jacket (had) fit him.
UK: Before he lost weight, the jacket (had) fitted him.
In my dialect (or at least my idiolect!), we do use fitted when describing making something to measure. So:
US & UK: I had that jacket fitted. The tailor fitted me for a jacket.
But according to The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style by Bryan A. Garner, I'm part of a dying breed and others are using only fit as the past tense of fit:
"Just since the mid-20th century, AmE has witnessed a shift in the past tense and past participle from fitted to fit. Traditionally, fit would have been considered incorrect, but it began appearing in journalism and even scholarly writing as early as the 1950s.
...
The traditionally correct past tense still surfaces—especially in BrE—but in AmE it is becoming rarer (and stuffier) year by year: “A most interesting item in my coin collection is a disk that fitted the pressure-spray nozzle on our apple-orchard pump some 50 years ago” (Christian Science Monitor). Although fitted may one day be extinct as a verb form, it will undoubtedly persist as an adjective fitted sheets."
Presumably the irregulari(s/z)ation of fit is on analogy with hit, which does not change its form in the past or past participle in either dialect.'