wear / wore / worn.
So inflected. The simple-past “wore” is sometimes mistakenly used as a past participle — e.g.:
o “And Imler turned out to be a pleasant surprise, using his quickness to create shots and gaining confidence at the point as the season has wore [read ‘worn’] on.” John C. Cotey, “The 2 Faces of Pirates Series,” St. Petersburg Times, 11 Dec. 1998, at 4.
o “By the latter stages of the first half, La Salle had wore [read ‘worn’] down the Clippers with its speed.” Bob Leddy, “Boys’ Basketball,” Providence J.-Bull., 6 Jan. 1999, at D5.
o “Bulls teammate Steve Kerr had said recently he thought the pressure of stardom and the grind of celebrity has wore [read ‘worn’] Michael down until he had nothing left.” Brian Schmitz, “Bad News, NBA: No More Mike,” Orlando Sentinel, 12 Jan. 1999, at C1.
Language-Change Index — “wore” as a past participle for “worn”: Stage 1.
For information about the Language-Change Index click here.
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Quotation of the Day: “Language, one might say, has a kind of inertia that limits the speaker’s freedom to project a distinctive meaning; words, for all their flexibility, mean at any given time what they have come to mean through repeated use and the writer or speaker must do the best he can with these worn counters.” Max Black, The Labyrinth of Language 88 (1968).
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