Pedantry of the day
Claire Underwood, the wife of the president in the splendid new House of Cards, expresses distress that a prisoner she was trying to help had hung himself in his cell.
Except, of course, he didn't. He hanged himself.
Meat is hung. Pictures are hung. People, however, are hanged, at least when it's in the sense of 'put to death by hanging'.
There. It's good to get that off my chest. Thank you for listening.
Comments
i think he hung himself and also hanged himself. If he suspended himself then he was indeed hung, no differently than if he was swinging on a safety rope on the side of a mountain. Being hung implies suspension but does not require deadly intent. Unfortunately as the point of supension was his neck not his arm then he was both hung by the neck and hanged. Yours pedantically, Phil & Mary-Ann Claridge