Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of ask.

Etymologies

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Examples

Comments

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  • Am I alone in finding this word a real pain in the arse to read out loud? I always have to slow right down and negotiate it with care.

    May 23, 2008

  • I'm with you on that yarb. As soon as you've negotiated the "sk" -- BAM, you've got that darn "d" and it's almost impossible to not make it sound like a "t." To enunciate it properly, you end up sounding like you've got peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth. I mean, what the hell?

    May 23, 2008

  • Ha ha, peanut butter - that's exactly it!

    It's annoying because it's used all the time in young children's books. Especially poorly written ones where the author is obsessed with using synonyms for said: characters ask, respond, answer, reply... it makes my piss boil! It's what they say that mattters, not how you narrate their saying of it. Bad writing aimed at children, far from being excusable, is more deplorable than bad writing for adults! And yet so many talentless chancers with a grant, or semi-literate illustrators, are foisting their mediocrity on the kids' sections of our public libraries these days. It's the best of times and the worst of times. Rant rant rant.

    May 23, 2008

  • English has something called (I think) progressive assimilation in voicing, which means that if a consonant is unvoiced and is followed immediately by another consonant (without an intervening vowel), then the second consonant also becomes unvoiced. Similarly, if the first consonant is voiced, then the second consonant also becomes voiced. This why "loafs" is pronounced with an "-fs" sound at the end, but "loaves" is pronounced with a "-vz" sound. By the same token, "asked" is correctly pronounced "askt" in Standard English, just as "booked" is pronounced "bookt", "blessed" is "blest", and "rushed" is "rusht". So go ahead and pronounce that "d" as a "t" and feel good about yourselves!

    May 23, 2008

  • I agree on all points. When I read to my children, I would embellish, (with words -- or more often, with sounds) but often, a re-write was in order and I got so I could do it on the fly! I'm guessing you'd be pretty good at it as well ;-)

    The last book I read to my son (now 12) was "A Wrinkle in Time." Quite the challenge, especially on a bad tongue day!

    May 23, 2008

  • I figure I've read more than 50,000 pages to my daughter. The only two words that I routinely botch are "soldier", which often comes out as "shoulder", and "dwarf" which comes out "dorf".

    May 23, 2008

  • No problem m., we love you anyway! :o) Let's see, 50K pages times 1 minute a page, divided by 60...um, well, a buncha hars.

    My own education in "doing all the voices" and emoting same for the kids was during my student teaching days (for starters) so I know how it goes...

    Oh, and BTW isn't there a word for slapping a slab of bread slathered with peeny bunkle up against the roof of a dog's mouth? If not, well, I betcha dere's gonna be, post haste, yah?

    May 23, 2008

  • An even harder word for me to read out loud: gasped.

    June 5, 2008

  • I'm with you there, yarb.

    June 5, 2008