'Lit' vs. 'lighted.' The mysteries of the dollar sign. Redd up.
Grammar Girl: For Writers and Language Lovers.
Mignon Fogarty, Inc.
4.5 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
1077. Is it “lit” or “lighted”? Both are correct, but we look at how their popularity has switched over time. Then we investigate four of the competing theories about the origin of the dollar sign and end with tips about how to use it.
The "dollar sign" segment was written by Jim Norrena, MFA, who has been writing and editing for more than thirty-five years. He’s the founder and principal editor at TypoSuction.com, an independent editing/writing service. He taught grammar and copyediting intensives and professional proofreading workshops at Media Alliance and served as events coordinator for Bay Area Editors’ Forum (BAEF). You can find him on LinkedIn.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Grammar Girl here. I'm Injohn Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, |
| 0:10.4 | we're going to talk about the difference between the words lit and lighted, and then we have the |
| 0:15.3 | fascinating story, or I should say stories, about the origin of the dollar sign. |
| 0:26.1 | Have you ever wondered why we have two past tense forms of the verb to light? |
| 0:31.0 | Should you say, Squiggly lit the candles or Squiggly lighted the candles? |
| 0:34.7 | Maybe you've even wondered whether one is wrong. |
| 0:39.3 | Lighted sounds kind of weird in that sentence, right? Squeegly lighted the candles. |
| 0:46.7 | Well, both words are correct. Light is one of those rare English words that has two acceptable past tense forms. Lighted is what we call a regular verb because you make it past tense by adding |
| 0:53.3 | ED to the end. Lit is what we call an irregular verb because you make it past tense by adding ED to the end. Lit is what we call an |
| 0:56.7 | irregular verb because you make it past tense by changing the actual spelling. You don't just add |
| 1:02.1 | ED to the end. So walked, sipped, and lighted are all regular verbs. And ran, drank, and lit are all irregular verbs. In the past, English had a lot |
| 1:15.8 | more irregular verbs, but over time, many changed form and became regular, making English simpler. |
| 1:22.8 | But for reasons nobody seems to be able to explain, light took the opposite route. |
| 1:29.0 | Long ago, people used the irregular verb saying they lit candles. |
| 1:34.3 | And for a time, the verb acted like many others and moved toward becoming a regular verb. |
| 1:40.1 | In other words, people started saying they lighted candles instead of saying they lit candles. |
| 1:46.4 | But, and this is the thing that makes the verb unusual. |
| 1:49.9 | Around the year 1900, people switched back to using lit as the past tense, and that's still the more common form today. |
| 1:59.3 | As a verb, lit is currently much more common than |
| 2:02.9 | lighted in both British and American English. Of course, lit and lighted can also be used as |
| 2:09.9 | adjectives. For example, you can say you enter a lit hallway or a lighted hallway, but the story here |
| 2:17.1 | is a little different. According to a Google |
... |
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