Verbs

“There’s some slate gray weaved in to the sofa.”

Contractions, Verbs

I heard this last evening during the HGTV television program “The Stagers”.

Problem:
A past-tense verb appears where the verb’s past participle is required.

Explanation:
The person who said this was referring to the colors in the fabric of a sofa.

The verb “is” — hidden within the contraction “There’s” — must be combined with a past participle of the verb “weave”.

Here are some examples of the verb “is” combined with past participles of verbs:

  • There is a piece taken from the pie.
  • There is a pink color painted on the wall.
  • The quarterback is hereby cut from the team.

The first example uses “taken” — the past participle of “taken”.

The second example uses “painted” — the past participle of “paint”.

The third example uses “cut” — the past participle of “cut”.

The past participle of “weave” is “woven”, not “weaved”, which is the past tense of “weave”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following combinations (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “is woven” — 1,230,000 matches
  • “is weaved” — 47,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors favor “is woven” over “is weaved” by a 25.9:1, which is good but not great.

Solution:
“There’s some slate gray woven in to the sofa.”

“Avenge” vs. “Revenge”

Verbs, Versus

I heard both of these words yesterday, and it made me wonder about the difference between “avenge” and “revenge”.

Problem:
As transitive verbs, these two words are not quite synonyms.

Explanation:
Some argue that the word “revenge” is never a verb.

However, if you accept that the word “revenge” can be a verb, then you should know the difference between “revenge” as a transitive verb and “avenge” as a transitive verb.

Lexicographers see motivation as the key distinction between the transitive verbs “avenge” and “revenge”.

The transitive verb “avenge” essentially means to take vengeance on behalf of, and its motivation relates to administration of appropriate punishment for an immoral or criminal act.

“The district attorney avenged the vagabond’s murder.” is an example of widely accepted use of the transitive verb “avenge”.

The transitive verb “revenge” essentially means to exact punishment for a wrong on behalf of, especially in a vindictive or resentful spirit, its motivation relates to true hatred, and it is stronger than the verb “avenge” at stressing retaliation.

“He revenged his brother’s murder.” is an example of widely accepted use of the transitive verb “revenge”.

Solution:
Use the transitive verb “avenge” with justice as the motivation, and use the transitive verb “revenge” with retaliatory hatred as the motivation.

“advised of”

Common English Blunders, Prepositions, Verbs

I saw this combination this morning.

Problem:
The preposition “of” should not follow the verb “advised”.

Explanation:
When used as an intransitive verb, “advise” means to offer advice.

This morning I saw a sentence such as “He was advised of the situation.”

If we were to apply the definition of the intransitive verb “advise” to the sentence, we would get “He was offered advice of the situation.”

That would literally mean “He was offered the situation’s advice.”, but the situation itself has no advice.

Instead, the writer of the sentence was trying to say “He was told about the situation.”

This gives us the solution, which is that the intransitive verb “advised” should be followed by the preposition “about” instead of the preposition “of”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following combinations (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “advised of” — 7,480,000 matches
  • “advised about” — 136,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the incorrect vs. correct preposition by a ratio of 55-to-1, which is absolutely dreadful.

Solution:
“advised about”