I find myself often winging it with “themself/themselves” and it seems to be like themselves is always colloquially correct when there are multiple preceding nouns you’re referring to…

Otherwise if there’s only one antecedent or whatever, its themself

Be gentle haha

  • pelley@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    People used to say “proven.” Like, it’s been proven. But now they say it’s been proved. When did this change?

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      2 months ago

      Acc. to Merriam-Webster it’s the opposite - “proved” used to be 4x more frequent than “proven” 50~60y ago, but nowadays they’re equally common in all contexts.

      In a more recent context, however, it’s possible that this tendency is being reverted because “proven” is being treated as a participle (even if proscribed), and the distinction between participle and simple past is slowly going away. So it’s possible that you’re noticing a small part of a bigger shift here. (I’m just conjecturing though, this might be wrong; take it with a grain of salt.)