But in the presence of two exactly contrary tendencies, the one in accordance with the general movement of the language [Pg200] since the Norman Conquest and the other opposed to it, it is unsafe, of course, to attempt any very positive generalizations. All one may exhibit with safety is a general habit of treating the verb conveniently. Now and then, disregarding grammatical tendencies, it is possible to discern what appear to be logical causes for verb phenomena. That /lit/ is preferred to /lighted/ and /hung/ to /hanged/ is probably the result of an aversion to fine distinctions, and perhaps, more fundamentally, to the passive. Again, the use of /found/ as the preterite of /to fine/ is obviously due to an ignorant confusion of /fine/ and /find/, due to the wearing off of /-d/ in /find/, and that of /lit/ as the preterite of /to alight/ to a confusion of /alight/ and /light/. Yet again, the use of /tread/ as its own preterite in place of /trod/ is probably the consequence of a vague feeling that a verb ending with /d/ is already of preterite form. /Shed/ exhibits the same process. Both are given a logical standing by such preterites as /bled/, /fed/, /fled/, /led/, /read/, /dead/ and /spread/. But here, once more, it is hazardous to lay down laws, for /shredded/, /headed/, /dreaded/, /threaded/ and /breaded/ at once come to mind. In other cases it is still more difficult to account for preterites in common use. /Drug/ is wholly illogical, and so are /clum/ and /friz/. Neither, fortunately, has yet supplanted the more intelligible form of its verb, and so it is not necessary to speculate about them. As for /crew/, it is archaic English surviving in American, and it was formed, perhaps, by analogy with /knew/, which has succumbed in American to /knowed/.