“THAT’S ONE OF THOSE IRREGULAR VERBS, isn’t it?” says Bernard Woolley, principal private secretary of the hapless Jim Hacker in the classic television show Yes, Prime Minister. “I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act.”
In everyday life it’s the most common verbs — Winston Churchill’s “short, old words” — that conjugate irregularly. To be, to have, to hold: these verbs break the rules because they predate them. In public life irregular verbs are a sign of political bias and motivated arguments. They’re used by those who want to deceive themselves about what drives them — and to write off their opponents as beneath consideration.
The process starts with the “fundamental attribution error”, as psychologists call the tendency to regard other people’s failings as caused
