A couple of weeks ago I missed an incorrect use of the word “hung” when I was editing a Grammar Girl podcast episode that mentioned Guy Fawkes being hanged for treason — instead saying he was “hung” for treason — so today I’m going over the proper use in case I confused people.

The standard quip is that curtains are hung and people are hanged. It’s not quite that cut-and-dried — some of my reference books say “hung” isn’t wrong, just less customary, when referring to past executions, and the Random House Unabridged Dictionary says that “hung” is becoming more common — but the majority of my books agree that the standard English past tense of “hang” is “hanged” when you are talking about dangling people or animals from a rope, and in other cases, it’s “hung.”

Why we have two past tense forms for the verb ‘hang’

It always seemed odd to me that there would be two past-tense forms of the word “hang” that differ depending on their meaning, so I did a little research and found out that in Old English there were two different words for “hang” (“hon” and “hangien”), and the entanglement of these words (plus an Old Norse word “hengjan”) is responsible for there being two past-tense forms of the word “hang” today. (1, 2, 3) The two past-tense forms seem to have co-existed in English for a while, with some regional differences, “hung” being more common in northern England, for example.

Legal language preserved ‘hung’

“Hung” eventually became the dominant past-tense form everywhere, except in legal uses (talking about hangings), which is a relatively common thing. The language of the law tends to change much slower than most other types of language. So that’s how we ended up with two different forms.

The difference between ‘hanged’ and ‘hung’

Today, Garner’s Modern English Usage says that using “hung” for “hanged” is at stage three on his Language-Change Index, which he describes as “Widespread: the form becomes commonplace even among many well-educated people but is still avoided in careful usage.”  And I confess that it doesn’t jump out at me when people use “hung” for “hanged.” In fact, the last time I covered the topic was when I misused “hung” the same way in a piece back in 2016. 

Another memory trick for ‘hanged’ versus ‘hung’

The way I tell people to remember the difference — besides the “curtains are hung” quip — is to think of Yosemite Sam saying “Well, I’ll be hanged” since there were a lot of hanging in the Old West. Maybe that’ll work better for you than it apparently does for me!

And thanks to the listeners who wrote to me about it.

References

• 1. Burchfield, R. W., ed. The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Third edition. New York: Oxford, 1996, p. 349.
• 2. Barnhart, R.K. and Steinmetz, S., eds. Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. Chambers Harrap Publishers. 1988, p.464.
• 3. Harper, D. “hang (v),” Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=hang (accessed November 3, 2024).