SNUCK

Mar 23, 2009 9:58 PM

It sounds like SNUCK is currently standard American English.

It is not standard in Britain (hece, Gail's comment).

it begun in the 1800's as uneducated, lower class speech.

So,   perhaps best to avoid it in written speech and perhaps also in spoken.

It IS included as an alternative in several on-line conjugations;  however,  sneaked seems

uncontroversial.

In American English “snuck” has become increasingly common as the past tense of “sneak.” This is one of many cases in which people’s humorously self-conscious use of dialect has influenced others to adopt it as standard and it is now often seen even in sophisticated writing in the US But it is safer to use the traditional form: “sneaked.”

sneak (verb) Its origins are shrouded in mystery ... From the beginning, and still in standard British English, the past tense and past participle forms are sneaked. Just as mysteriously, in a little more than a century, a new past tense form, snuck, has crept and then rushed out of dialectal use in America, first into the areas of use that lexicographers label jocular or uneducated, and more recently, has reached the point where it is a virtual rival of sneaked in many parts of the English-speaking world. But not in Britain, where it is unmistakably taken to be a jocular or non-standard form.