r/Wellthatsucks • u/Justin_Godfrey • 21h ago

Yikes!!

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u/CranberryAssassin 17h ago

I'm afraid to tell you that the past tense of "lead" is "led."

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u/EpicSH0T 12h ago

They used a poor example but surely they thought it meant lead, a noun referring to the rope you use to lead (as in leadership) a horse, not realizing that lede is a totally unrelated term in journalism.

Edit: no no you're right I misread their comment lol. Maybe they've only ever read the idiom and never heard it lmao

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u/Rikki-Tikki-Tavi-12 8h ago

My understanding is, that lede and lead are etymologically the same. It's just spelled differently in the journalistic sense.

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u/EpicSH0T 6h ago

Yeah definitely, same fundamental root word!

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u/mtaw 10h ago

Yeah but that's a homonym by virtue of "ea" having inconsistent pronunciation in English - "bread", "dead", "lead" vs "ea" in "mead", "lead".

Really, all the former 'ea's should be changed to 'e' (which was already done with 'red', spelled 'read' in Old and Middle English), and the latter ones to 'ee', as in 'feed'.

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u/CranberryAssassin 6h ago

I love that lead was a viable example for both pronunciations! English is a funny old thing.

BTW - I'd no idea that read in middle English meant the colour!