The case of /helt/ is probably an example of change by false analogy. During the thirteenth century, according to Sweet,[44] "/d/ was changed to /t/ in the weak preterites of verbs [ending] in /rd/, /ld/ and /nd/." Before that time the preterite of /sende/ (/send/) had been /sende/; now it became /sente/. It survives in our modern /sent/, and the same process is also revealed in /built/, /girt/, /lent/, /rent/ and /bent/. The popular speech, disregarding the fact that /to hold/ is a strong verb, arrives at /helt/ by imitation. In the case of /tole/, which I almost always hear in place of /told/, there is a leaping of steps. The /d/ is got rid of without any transitional use of /t/. So also, perhaps, in /swole/, which is fast displacing /swelled/. /Attackted/ and /drownded/ seem to be examples of an effort to dispose of harsh combinations by a contrary process. Both are very old in English. /Boughten/ and /dreampt/ [Pg202] present greater difficulties. Lounsbury says that /boughten/ probably originated in the Northern [/i. e./, Lowland Scotch] dialect of English, "which ... inclined to retain the full form of the past participle," and even to add its termination "to words to which it did not properly belong."[45] I record /dreampt/ without attempting to account for it. I have repeatedly heard a distinct /p/-sound in the word. The general tendency toward regularization is well exhibited by the new verbs that come into the language constantly. Practically all of them show the weak conjugation, for example, /to phone/, /to bluff/, /to rubber-neck/, /to ante/, /to bunt/, /to wireless/, /to insurge/ and /to loop-the-loop/. Even when a compound has as its last member a verb ordinarily strong, it remains weak itself. Thus the preterite of /to joy-ride/ is not /joy-rode/, nor even /joy-ridden/, but /joy-rided/. And thus /bust/, from /burst/, is regular and its preterite is /busted/, though /burst/ is irregular and its preterite is the verb itself unchanged. The same tendency toward regularity is shown by the verbs of the /kneel/-class. They are strong in English, but tend to become weak in colloquial American. Thus the preterite of /to kneel/, despite the example of /to sleep/ and its analogues, is not /knel'/, nor even /knelt/, but /kneeled/. I have even heard /feeled/ as the preterite of /to feel/, as in "I /feeled/ my way," though here /felt/ still persists. /To spread/ also tends to become weak, as in "he /spreaded/ a piece of bread." And /to peep/ remains so, despite the example of /to leap/. The confusion between the inflections of /to lie/ and those of /to lay/ extends to the higher reaches of spoken American, and so does that between /lend/ and /loan/. The proper inflections of /to lend/ are often given to /to loan/, and so /leaned/ becomes /lent/, as in "I /lent/ on the counter." In the same way /to set/ has almost completely superseded /to sit/, and the preterite of the former, /set/, is used in place of /sat/.