密歇根新闻广播 freeze和squeeze的过去时为何不一样

This week on That's What They Say, we turn to A.A. Milne's classic children's novel, The House at Pooh Corner.

We love this line from a passage in which Piglet has to squeeze himself through a letter box in order to get out of Owl's house: "Piglet squeezed and he squoze, and with one last squoze, he was out."

Maybe it's just us, but we think "squoze" is a pretty great non-standard verb.

Though it's tempting¹ to categorize "squoze" as a newer addition to English, it's actually at least 200 years old, from what we can tell.

Some of you may remember "squoze" getting a lot of attention in 1985. That's because former President Ronald Regan used "squoze" during a news conference in which he was discussing the skin cancer that was removed from his nose: "I picked at it and squoze it and so forth² and really messed myself up a little."

Incidentally³, there was also a drink mix in the 1970s called Squoze. Its mascot⁴ was half of a piece of sugar who claimed Pillsbury squoze him in half to give Squoze "half the calories of most pre-sweetened drink mixes."

Unfortunately, Squoze didn't have the staying power of Kool-Aid, so all we can do is hope that the maimed piece of sugar went on to lead a full and productive⁵ life.

Presidents and pre-sweetened drink mixes aside, let's take a look at "squeeze." This word comes into English around 1600 and appears to be an alteration⁶ of an earlier verb, "quease" which meant "to press."

When we look at a verb like "freeze" which becomes "froze" in the past tense, it's not hard to see how we followed the pattern and came up with "squoze." However, there are plenty of other verbs that don't follow this structure. There's "please" and "pleased," "ease" and "eased," "sneeze" and "sneezed," etc.

That said, we think "snoze" instead of "sneezed" is another really great non-standard verb. Are there any non-standard verbs that you like to use?

1 tempting   

a.诱人的, 吸引人的

参考例句：

• It is tempting to idealize the past. 人都爱把过去的日子说得那么美好。
• It was a tempting offer. 这是个诱人的提议。

2 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

3 incidentally   

adv.附带地，顺便提及

参考例句：

• Incidentally,I think you still owe me some money.顺便说一句，我想你还欠我一些钱。
• Incidentally,here's a good piece of news.附带告诉你一个好消息。

4 mascot   

n.福神，吉祥的东西

参考例句：

• The football team's mascot is a goat.足球队的吉祥物是山羊。
• We had a panda as our mascot.我们把熊猫作为吉详物。

5 productive   

adj.能生产的，有生产价值的，多产的

参考例句：

• We had a productive meeting that solved some problems.我们开了一个富有成效的会议，解决了一些问题。
• Science and technology are part of the productive forces.科学技术是生产力。

6 alteration   

n.变更，改变；蚀变

参考例句：

• The shirt needs alteration.这件衬衣需要改一改。
• He easily perceived there was an alteration in my countenance.他立刻看出我的脸色和往常有些不同。