A grammatical plea to think “Led Zeppelin” and not “Leadville” when using the past tense of the verb “to lead”
Please don’t think of me as a grammar Nazi. Think of me as a friend of the Periodic Table, who is tired of seeing an intermittently innocent heavy metal being thoughtlessly ABUSED by my fellow members of the Truth Community.
Surely, the element LEAD is bad, just like arsenic and fluorine. But Lead is a cultured killer. Please give him some credit, for being civilized since the earliest days of civilization. Lead may be a predator on women and children, but he’s a very civilized butler who probably did it.
Lead, however, is not a HOOLIGAN who uses incorrect English.
In contrast to the element, I call your attention to the past tense of “to lead”, where “leading” means a variety of things with which you are familiar.
LINK: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lead
Unlike the verb “to read”, where “read” (pronounced like “reed”) is the present tense, and “read” (pronounced like “red”) is the past tense, the verb “to lead” gives rise to “lead” which is pronounced like “leed”) in the present tense, and “led” (pronounced like the element lead, Pb) in the past tense.
THERE IS NO VERB “LEAD” IN THE PAST TENSE.
Don’t believe me? Look here:
LINK: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/2281
LINK: https://grammarist.com/spelling/led-lead/
LINK: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/led-lead/
Thankfully, this mistake is rarely made by the posters on our site. It is, however, quite common in blog posts, comments, and articles which are brought in from the internet.
I hope to keep things that way. My purpose is to warn you away from such foolishness. Even the deadly “should of” (it’s “should’ve”, a contraction of “should have”) is quaintly excusable as emergent new English, in my horribly radical linguistic opinion.
But the element LEAD as a past tense? HORRIFYING.
Please don’t equate the mere historical mass murderer LEAD with genocidal maniacs like FAUCI, TEDROS, and WALENSKY, who surely misconjugate the verb “to lead”, among their various other crimes.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. Your efforts to avoid Fauci-level linguistic crimes will be rewarded by not seeing the above picture, which I intend to post whenever I see “lead” used in a past tense where “led” is appropriate. Even if merely being quoted from the internet.
Your humble grammar Nazi defender of a fellow heavy metal,
W
