Splendid Isolation

Oy.  Once again, the bludde boileth overre.  Guess why?  Never mind, it’s the Daily Mail again.

PICTURED: Moment Kaley Cuoco’s stunt double is RAN OVER by a car

Give me a minute while I get a fresh cup of coffee.

I’ve ranted before about the Brit tendency to misuse tenses, e.g. “he was sat there” instead of “he was sitting there”, and now we have the latest manifestation, using “ran” instead of “run”.

In this case, the problem stems from fucking illiteracy  ignorance of what is being omitted from the sentence:  “…stunt double is (being) run over by a car.”  Clearly, saying “stunt double is being ran over by a car” jars the senses — or maybe it doesn’t, in the post-grammatical world we now find ourselves in.

Just for the record, “ran” in this example is a transitive past-tense verb, i.e. “the car ran over the stunt double” (although it really should have run over both the writer and editor of this article).  Similarly, it can be used without an object (“the boy ran away”) unless it’s used in a different sense (the man ran the company — i.e. managed the company).

Of all the times to run out of fuel for my flamethrower…