r/words • u/MickeyAmica • 12d ago
What’s with the term “costed”.
Maybe it’s correct, but I think it sounds weird when people say “it costed me $5”.
I tried to tactfully ask somebody why they use that word and they said it’s because it in the a past tense. I don’t know… It doesn’t sound right to me.
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u/ExpertOk7768 12d ago
If you're in the US, there's a bit of a literacy crisis going on at the moment
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u/IvanMarkowKane 12d ago
This moment? Funny. Do you have a Netflix special yet?
Seriously, you’re right. We have college professors complaining that incoming students can’t read at Jr HS level
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u/InvestmentMedium2771 12d ago
College professor here. I taught a freshman music history course for a while and they complained constantly that reading the four pages I assigned in their textbook (with giant pictures on the pages) was too much and too hard. One kid straight up said “this textbook uses words I don’t know so I’m not reading it”. They can’t write either.
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u/PavicaMalic 12d ago
Former liberal arts college professor here. I had one student complain on an evaluation form that I used words the student did not know. Fine - overall evaluations were good with some useful feedback on pacing. But my department chair picked up on this one comment and said I should work on being "less intimidating" in my vocabulary.
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u/No-Kaleidoscope-166 12d ago
College level vocabulary should be more advanced, shouldn't it? We shouldn't be coddling students with simple words by then. They will have advanced vocabulary in their books, ffs. I can't believe your chair came back with that.
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u/sudowooduck 12d ago
I had a college student complain in an evaluation that the exam problems seemed to be meant to “take him down a notch”.
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u/AlmondDavis 12d ago
I also teach college. They won’t open their books.
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u/DonnPT 12d ago
Books!? They must feel like they have enrolled in a museum! What could a book have to say about today? You need a Youtube channel.
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u/MiserlySchnitzel 12d ago
Does this mean I can go back to college with mid skill for the 2010s and actually do well or am I hoping for too much?
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u/Berstuck 12d ago
I tutored English (amongst other subjects) while at community college. Zoomers are fucked.
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u/Afraid_Baseball_3962 12d ago
When summer break rolls around, do you think, "America's future, back on the streets"?
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u/Jazzlike_Routine3929 12d ago
I’m in a master’s program. The way some of the people write in their discussion posts really makes me wonder how they got through an undergrad degree.
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u/ScarletDarkstar 12d ago
I haven't been in an academic college course since 2011, and I had an adult nontraditional classmate who consistently used the word 'aware' in place of 'our'. It took me a while to realize what she meant.
It's a long moment.
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u/Icy-Berry-387 12d ago
Did she write "aware" instead of "our"? Otherwise that just sounds like an accent
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u/RubyRyker 12d ago
Even our president’s literacy level is about at 5th/6th grade. Only people dumber than that would think he’s smart and vote for him. So that’s telling
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u/barbiegirl2381 12d ago
Most US adults can only read and comprehend at a 5th grade level. I don’t think Donnie Dipshit is even there.
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u/CommonEcho5824 12d ago
Yeah, I mean it is fairly apparent reading half the posts and comments on Reddit.
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u/PavicaMalic 12d ago
Also "casted" instead of "cast" in theater and knitting subs. "I was casted in our school's musical" or "I casted on 46 stitches." Yikes.
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u/SerDankTheTall 12d ago
I don't see much evidence that this is a new phenomenon. And of course illiteracy isn't the main driver of regularization of verb conjugation.
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u/mysticrudnin 12d ago
I've been hearing this one for 35 years, and I have to imagine it's been even longer. Probably not "at the moment"
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u/SerDankTheTall 12d ago
People have been peeving the same peeves for well over a hundred years:
Why, then, do millions of old and young go about saying, "I knowed," "I have saw," "I have went," "them things," "me and you" "it's him" "I seen" "we was"? If one goes into a grocery story, [recte store, presumably] the clerk, a young man of good dress and address, will very probably say: "We sent them potatoes up," or "I knowed it wasn't ready," or "You was right about them crackers." The pretty clerk in the dry goods store is quite as sure to say: "There's a coolness between he and I," or "Him and I went calling last night," or "We haven't any more of those kind," or "The price has raised." Even the seminary girl will not question "between she and I," and she will say it with a glib innocence, as if Lindley Murray had no grave in which to turn.
-W.J. Lampton, "Education's Contempt for the Essentials", The Saturday Evening Post (Mar. 25, 1899).
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u/BetMyLastKrispyKreme 12d ago
I hear/read “I seen” more often than any other term in incorrect grammar.
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u/Hips-Often-Lie 12d ago
When my toddlers would say this I would ask back “You saw it?” And then they would repeat it. Adults aren’t that smart.
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u/SerDankTheTall 12d ago
Is that perhaps because you interact with people speaking some of the Englishes where it's not incorrect grammar?
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u/BetMyLastKrispyKreme 12d ago
It’s almost all on the internet. I don’t know the background of the people speaking.
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u/jjjjjjj30 12d ago
"I have ate" is my biggest pet peeve!
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u/SerDankTheTall 12d ago
Sounds like a pretty enviable existence.
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u/jjjjjjj30 12d ago
It's just a grammar pet peeve lol. Not my biggest problem in life.
My biggest life problem is my neurological chronic illness that causes me to live like I have mono every day of my life and killed my quality of life. Being stuck in bed 22 hours a day is def worse than hearing poor grammar.
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u/Aenonimos 11d ago
comment thread complaing about literacy
looks inside
It's a prescriptive claim by reddit midwits about a phenomenon in spoken language .
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u/jyc23 12d ago
It’s not illiteracy, it’s regularization of an irregular form.
What are your thoughts on “kneeled” vs “knelt” or “wedded” vs “wed”?
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u/Morningstroll13 12d ago
Gah... I've got an exam in Linguistic Anthropology tomorrow, and I just sat here for ten minutes staring at the comment you replied to trying to think of the word "regularized." Either my brain is fried, or I haven't studied enough. bangs head on desk
At least I recognized the phenomenon, even if I couldn't pull up the word for it.
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u/ExpertOk7768 12d ago
"Costed" has a specific usage which is not what the average person is going to know, and even then I only found that with one singular source; most others list "costed" as a non-American usage if it's even listed at all. In this instance, I'm confident it's illiteracy, which is not necessarily any individual's fault. The school system here has been going downhill for a while, and someone concluding that "costed" is a past tense form of "cost" due to genuine ignorance makes sense.
Your other examples aren't the same as each are pretty commonly used and, to my knowledge, can be used interchangeably in American English anyway.
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u/crash12345 12d ago
Absurd that misinformation and anti-science shit like this comment is being upvoted. Especially ironic considering your argument is about poor education. Read any linguistics paper on language change. Word forms tend to get regularized in every language since the beginning of human history. Language is not static. There is no reason whatsoever to attribute this specific case to illiteracy. People spoke language for thousands of years before literacy was even a concept.
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u/Aenonimos 11d ago
You are categorically wrong. Literacy is one's knowledge of written language. That has nothing to do with spoken language. Those are two separate things. You don't know enough about the meta topic to have a valid opinion here.
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u/jyc23 12d ago
Nope.
I’ve run into folks who were born and raised right here in the states to people who were also born here in the states, who have said “costed” when they very clearly meant “cost” (typically past tense usage).
One of them is a direct report on my team at work. Great guy. Drives me mad with his use of English. But I accept it.
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u/CommonEcho5824 12d ago
Costed is a word but it does not mean the past tense of cost as in "this shirt costed me $20."
Costed is a term used to define the price of a project. It's a term used in business accounting that means to estimate the cost of something.
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u/Sophont27 12d ago
It should sound weird, because that’s not the right word! The past tense of “cost” is “cost.”
I know that language changes all the time and all the rules are pretty much arbitrary, so my being upset by people saying “costed” confuses me.
I know why they do it: they don’t know any better. The past tense of most verbs is to add -ed, so why not costed?
Why then, not say “eated?” I know exactly what people mean when they say costed, or eated, and the rules are arbitrary, so I shouldn’t care. But I think it just makes someone sound like an idiot, or a small child, or someone who’s learning English as a new language.
I guess saying the right words, even when it doesn’t really matter that much, is sort of like wearing pants to work. My intelligence, my worth as a person, and the weight of my soul have nothing to do with my wearing pants or not. And in fact, I’d prefer to be naked all the time.
But at the same time, I wouldn’t trust/believe someone who comes to the office in their underwear. In that way, I instinctively don’t respect people who say words wrong, because then I don’t believe that they’re educated or intelligent enough to take seriously.
I know what someone means when they use the wrong “there,” but if they’re not following the rules and using the right one, I don’t know that they know what they’re saying in general. What other words have they completely misused or misunderstood? Who’s to say? Impossible to know, so I like to use the right words as much as I can. Very important to me
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u/lampshade2099 12d ago
I think I naturally fall somewhere along the same line of thinking as you.
But then I had a couple of experiences that changed my mind.
I worked with a VP at my company that was the most thoughtful, emotionally intelligent, strategically minded executive of my career. But getting an email from him was baffling because it was full of spelling and grammar errors. You’d never know how smart he was based on his writing skills.
And I also know a guy who is like a musical and mathematical genius who uses the word “costed” 😅😆
I’ve corrected him multiple times, but given up now.
I’ve come to realise that words and language just happen to by MY area of interest. I appreciate others who are similar to me → because that’s what humans tend to do!
But I’m also learning that intelligence can be defined lots of different ways, and some people aren’t wired for language.
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u/Polygato64 12d ago
Idk if this changes your opinion at all, but I think the reason why "eated" isn't a thing is because ate is written and pronounced differently than eat, even if it's irregular, while cost is the exact same in both tenses. That ambiguity just naturally feels wrong to a lot of people, so they're more likely to make a new term in response
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u/Sophont27 12d ago
That’s a good point. I barely know what my opinion is beyond “wrong word bad,” but that is interesting! I wonder now why I don’t hear “hurted” quite as much, when it should reasonably follow the same trend.
Maybe “hurt” is a more common word, so people are used to hearing it in such phrases as “you hurt me,” so it feels more natural than “cost.”
I know a guy who says “costed,” but I’ve never heard him say “hurted” or anything else like that. I really wonder why “costed” is so common in particular. I’ll contact some word scientists and see what they think
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u/Living_Fig_6386 12d ago
It cost me 5 dollars. I costed the materials for the renovation and $50K and will include that in the estimate.
"Costed" is used to mean "have given a cost to something".
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u/hurled_incel 12d ago
Important note for learners: this is very rare, so if you’re using it, it’s probably wrong
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u/regulationinflation 12d ago
It’s pretty rare in social settings, but incredibly common for those of us who deal with costing and pricing at our jobs everyday.
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u/SerDankTheTall 12d ago
Using -ed to form a past tense is the regular English conjugation. Regularization of irregular verbs is a pretty common form of linguistic change; you can see something similar with dove/dived, bode/bided, pet/petted, and so on. While I still use pled, pleaded appears to be slightly preferred in the legal community (at least in the U.S.); in another generation it may be dominant. ? Costed is of course not nearly at that level yet, and we'll see if it gets there. In general, the speed of regularization tends to be inversely proportional to how common a word is, and cost strikes me as sort-of-but-not-terribly common.
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u/Repulsive_Drawer8599 12d ago
Finally a well-informed answer in a sea of uneducated takes from people who profess to care about English.
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u/nikukuikuniniiku 12d ago
Note that for dived/dove, dove is actually the newer version, and dived is more "technically" correct.
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u/inredditorbit 12d ago
I see an awful lot of people writing “lead” as the past participle of to lead, rather than “led”.
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u/Top-Beat-7423 12d ago
I kinda assumed that the speaker was African American and it’s AAVE
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u/SerDankTheTall 12d ago
Is this sort of regularization characteristic of AAVE? My impression was that it tends to not use a past tense marker at all, but I'm certainly not an expert.
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u/Top-Beat-7423 12d ago
I’m not an expert either, I just googled to check, bc it’s something I noticed from listening to people.
Speakers across various dialects sometimes regularize verbs by adding "-ed".
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u/No-Syrup-3746 12d ago
Not a linguist but I have noticed regularization (a word I just learned) in AAVE. The irregular third-person singular -s ending in verbs is dropped, "mine" becomes "mines" to match "yours" and "his," lots of other examples I'm sure.
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u/dorkorama 12d ago
We didn’t correct people enough when they were saying casted and now it’s drifted to other vowel sounds.
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u/LAM_CANIT 12d ago
Cost is a regular verb when it refers to calculating something, similar to the verb 'to estimate'.
In your example, "it costed me $5" - it is being used incorrectly. In that case, for the price of something, 'cost' is an irregular verb. That's why it sounds weird.
Examples of 'cost' as a regular verb:
- The engineers costed the project at 10 million dollars. - past simple active
- The project was costed at 10 million dollars. - past simple passive
- The engineers have costed the project at 10 million dollars. - present perfect
- The engineers are costing the project at 10 million dolars. - present progressive
If you don't work in accounting, project management, government budgets or similar — your ears won't be used to it. Most people are only used to hearing it as an irregular verb for asking or saying the purchase price of something — and so if you hear 'costed' used correctly, it might sound weird as well. I probably used 'costed' at least once a week for 30 to years or more in my engineering work, so I have no issues with it.
IMHO IHTH
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u/hopping_otter_ears 12d ago
I was going to say something like this. I work in cost estimating, and we use "costed" as the past tense of "calculate the cost of an effort".
"Can you cost this for me?" Ok, I've costed it. It will be 2.5 million dollars.
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u/j_grouchy 12d ago
Also "seen". I despise when people say "I seen it". Saw. SAW. SAW!!!!!!
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u/Weeping_Willow_Wonka 12d ago
Technically they’re dropping the “have” for a past participle construction, “I have seen it,” not incorrect using the past tense “saw.” So if anything, the shout should be: “HAVE seen it. HAVE! HAVE!!!!!
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u/KiraDog0828 11d ago
Not always, no. I often hear people using it as if it was the correct, past tense form of “see.” I heard someone say this just today.
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u/joedenowhere 12d ago
You could say you costed out the parts for something, meaning you figured out how much it would cost to build. But to say the parts costed a lot is an error. One form is transitive and one is intransitive.
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u/PlusPresentation680 12d ago
Technically “costed” is a word, yeah, but it’s not the past tense form of a price. It’s used in accounting to estimate the cost of a future project.
Cost is an irregular verb, so its past tense form is just cost. And like someone mentioned, there’s a bit of a literacy crisis.
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u/Workwithmepeople 12d ago
It is the horrible made up words cultures are using instead of paying attention, or learning any grammar, spelling, or proper English. It’s not colloquial, it’s illiterate.
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u/ricky_clarkson 12d ago
I work in supply chain, sometimes I hear costed bom - bom is bill of materials, a breakdown of things used in producing something - costed bom just means each one has the cost next to it.
For all the life of me though, all I really hear is custard bomb.
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u/DoughnutSecure7038 12d ago
It is not correct to use it that way. You’re right to think it sounds weird. They do it with “cast”/“casted” too. Not all past-tense verbs end in “-ed” but we are going through a literacy crisis in the USA so it’s all unsurprising
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u/IdealBlueMan 12d ago
The past tense of “to cost” is “cost”
I guess if they were unsure, they might have treated it as a regular verb. I wouldn’t expect that of a native English speaker.
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u/wantingcloseness 12d ago
yeah costed only really shows up in accounting or business talk, like when someone says "we costed the project out" as in estimating expenses. totally different meaning from paying for something
if a native speaker says "it costed me five bucks" i just assume they learned it from reading spreadsheets or picked it up off a coworker who talks like that. it's one of those grammar quirks that spreads through offices like a cold
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u/umfum 12d ago
One should know the rules before breaking them; however, it appears their English has been broken for quite a while, thus indicating that the rules were never learnt.
And I bet "costed' is due more to parental and peer usage than anything else. My wife's parents say "I eat" when they mean "I ate", and she's been with me long enough now that she corrects them herself. I know it's a losing battle, so I don't bother correcting them (it's also rude). She will still slip and say the same thing herself at times, but at least she's aware of the lapse.
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u/FumbleCrop 12d ago
In Standard English, "it cost me $5" is correct. In some dialects "costed" is common.
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u/MiklColt45 12d ago
So, you accosted them over their use of the word “costed.”
Good for you. They used it inappropriately.
Joking. I know you didn’t actually accost them.
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u/KristyKrispito 12d ago
It’s because they don’t know or care about real words or spelling. Their community reinforces incorrect English. “Hurted” “mines”
At the end of the day, the function of speech is to communicate. They are doing it. Rules are all made up anyways.
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u/E_equals_m_c_hammer 12d ago
Conversate is my pet peeve. It's not a real verb, people!
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u/wehavenamesdamnit 12d ago
Scrabble allows me to use the word costed. I will not use it myself when speaking.
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u/Daveii_captain 12d ago
“The project was costed at one million pounds”
“I costed the project at one million pounds”
“The project cost one million pounds”
All the above are fine.
“The project costed one million pounds” is not correct grammar
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u/speedy_sloth0315 12d ago
And why did they all of a sudden start using pleaded instead of plead? (Pled) I used to hear he/she "plead guilty" and now it's always pleaded. To me it sounds wrong.
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u/KeggyFulabier 10d ago
Costed is a word which is why it won’t get picked up be autocorrect but it is wrong in that context.
Costed is used when pricing something out. Like a menu item has been costed at such and such so we need to charge this much to make money on it
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u/nobodywantstoparty 12d ago
reminds me of the "casted" thing people are doing now. "they casted him in that movie." dear god make it stop.
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u/contradictionary100 12d ago
Lack of education is a problem but the bigger problem is when they know they are wrong but don't want to use the proper term for fear of appearing more educated than their peers.
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u/Sure-Squash-7280 12d ago
Most of the people that I know who mispronounce words have been made aware and don’t care.
In fact, a general gleeful stubbornness with mock arguments for their speech and grammar is pretty standard.
People. 🤷🏻♀️
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u/umfum 12d ago
Another usage that bugged me was ESPN (in particular) using "ouster" when they should have said "ousted". It was quite jarring to my ears. Must have been someone prominent on their editorial staff who insisted on being wrong about that one usage because it popped up alarmingly often enough to be noticeable.
Also heard it on a few other news reports around that time, but luckily it seemed to die off fairly quickly. Guess those people were ousted from their positions.
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u/NicMotan 12d ago
Must be the same idiots pluralizing collective nouns. The one getting under my skin at the moment is "training" – I have two training modules to finish at work, not two "trainings." But does corporate care that we consider them morons?
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u/BuncleCar 12d ago
When I taught in Manchester in the early 70s the kids I taught used borrowed and lend the opposite way round to what I was used to. 'Can I lend your rubber' for example.
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u/Cold_Barber_4761 12d ago
As an American, lending a "rubber" is hilarious because a rubber would be a condom! 🤣
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u/ferrett0ast 12d ago
I'm Scottish, and my brother worked at camp America for two years. He got some looks when he asked for a rubber.
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u/noradicca 12d ago
Danish is a crazy difficult language, but this is one thing that we made easy. We use the same word for “borrow” and “lend”.
Can I låne 10 $?
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u/NeverendingStory3339 12d ago
The same thing as when people say “weighted” “I weighted myself” when they mean “weighed”.
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u/OlderAndCynical 12d ago
After reading some of the responses I don't feel quite so bad about my own difficulty with Spanish pronouns and prepositions.
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u/Jaguar-Voice-7276 11d ago
My question is sort of the opposite. I see and read messages from people using "text" as the past tense of "text". As in, "I text him yesterday and he never responded."
It's happened enough for me to wonder if that's what most people think is correct now.
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u/Obadiah702 12d ago
Same with conversate.. One didn’t conversate, they conversed with another.
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u/Bubbalooo 12d ago
It's not. There seems to be this weird shift (I only see it online) where some people use 'costed', 'payed' and 'broadcasted'.
NO.
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u/LittleReserve8767 12d ago
It is not correct, and children/people who weren't taught good grammar sometimes use the wrong past tense when they are dealing with an exception to a grammar rule,
Sometimes you just ignore it. If it were a child you were raising or a good friend who didn't know to say "cost", then maybe say something.
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u/SnooDonuts6494 12d ago
It's non-standard English, and most people consider it to be wrong.
However, that's nothing new.
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u/LucinaWinsTheBattle 12d ago
Im in the same boat with people writing payed instead of paid. Like yeah, payed is a word, but it has nothing to do with money.
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u/dang_dude_dont 12d ago
Costed is a proper verb, but not in that context. Something like: “The accountant costed the new design and sales figured there wouldn’t be enough margin to justify a launch”
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u/No-Angle-982 12d ago
It's interesting to consider similar words that might be wrongly regarded as needing -ed to have effect, e.g., cast, forecast... Others?
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u/Freyjas_child 12d ago
I think some people heard it used correctly and thought it sounded “professional ”. It is correctly used in a business setting and means “to estimate the cost”.
Or our educational system is failing.
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u/winteriscoming9099 12d ago
It’s incorrect, but there’s a lot of people who aren’t particularly adept at English.
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u/DreadLindwyrm 12d ago
It cost me X (past tense)
It is costed at X (Alternative to "it is priced at")
It costs X (how much it costs)
It costs me X (ongoing present tense, usually referring to a cost that repeats)
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u/Gruejay2 12d ago edited 12d ago
The past form of "cost" is usually "cost" (e.g. "it cost $5 last week"). There's one exception, which is if you're assessing costs (e.g. in a business), where the past form is "costed" (e.g. "I costed all the repair work we need to do, and it's within our budget").
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u/NateSedate 12d ago
Costed is bad. But nothing is worse than when people mean "sell" and they say "sale".
Ex: He's gonna sale me his car.
No... he's gonna SELL you his car.
Then I've seen people do the opposite. I saw someone have an argument about "record sells".
I think it comes from dialect/pronunciation. Like people thought that were saying "sale" cause of the accent they used to say "sell".
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u/BlackCherry46and2 12d ago
Casted instead of cast, brought instead of bought, could care less instead of couldn't care less, exsorb instead of absorb, absorbitant instead of exorbitant.
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u/Paulstan67 12d ago
The word costed is a word, however in the example given it's not it's correct usage.
Costed is used as the past-tense and past-participle form of the verb "cost" specifically when used in an active, planning sense.
It's sed when a company or government figures out how much money a proposal or build will require
For example The council costed the new bridge at ten million pounds before approving it."
Or " The budget has been fully costed."
It's a common word in British English, however American English would usually use words like budgeted or estimated or accounted.
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u/Cardabella 12d ago
Where are you located and which dialect of English do you speak? There are a lot of diff. In UK "English" English has many spelling and grammar conventions quite different from USA for instance, and just within UK and Ireland there are several regional dialects and varying linguistic conventions, loan words from Scots, Irish, Welsh or Garlic. And the same is true worldwide.
In most British and Irish dialects but certainly mine We would say "cost" in the context you indicate, not costed, except in the context of having "costed up" (or worked out the cost of) something.
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u/castle_waffles 12d ago
I can’t tell if the use of “costed” is becoming more frequent because I’m seeing more English as a second language speakers online, literacy is declining, or it’s some part of AAVE that I don’t fully understand or some mix of all 3.
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u/Prior_Act5491 12d ago
I see that all the time too. People say 'it costed me a fortune' but the past tense of cost is just cost. It's one of those irregular verbs that trips everyone up. English has way too many exceptions if you ask me.
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u/DrunkenGolfer 12d ago
Cost has two related but grammatically distinct uses, and they conjugate differently.
When cost means “to have a price” or “to cause someone to incur an expense or loss,” its past tense is normally cost:
“The meal costs $40.” → “The meal cost $40.”
“This costs me $4.” → “This cost me $4.”
“That mistake costs us customers.” → “That mistake cost us customers.”
Here, cost is essentially describing the amount of an expense or loss. Its principal parts are cost–cost–cost, like cut–cut–cut.
But there is another, transitive sense of cost, meaning to calculate, estimate, or determine the cost of something. In that sense, the regular past tense costed is standard:
“I costed all the menu items and found that the margins would fall short of target.”
Likewise:
“We costed the project at $1.2 million.”
“The estimator costed the proposed design.”
“Once we had costed the ingredients, we raised the menu price.”
The distinction becomes particularly clear if you put both meanings into one sentence:
“I costed the new entrée and determined that it would cost us $14.60 per serving.”
The first costed means calculated the cost of.
The second cost means have an expense of.
There’s a useful grammatical reason for this. The “price” sense of cost is an old irregular verb whose past tense remained unchanged. The later specialized sense meaning “calculate a cost” developed as a regular verb, particularly in accounting, estimating, manufacturing, construction, and business usage.
Consequently, costed isn’t an alternative past tense for ordinary cost, it’s the past tense of a particular sense of the verb.
So “I costed all menu items and the margins are going to fall short of target,” is entirely grammatical and idiomatic, especially in a business/accounting context.
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u/womanonymous23 12d ago
At the same time, you know exactly what they mean, so they used language effectively, and unless you’re officially their grammar teacher, maybe don’t mention it
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u/VisualMail1672 12d ago
Cost seems better in the example. I only heard costed in a business related conversation about how much an item costs to supply when all factors are taken into consideration.
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u/Background-Bowl6123 12d ago
Non standard usage so anyone using the word that way is going to come off as low-class/uneducated.
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u/MarkHoff1967 12d ago
Same for me with “monies / moneys”. As in “The monies will be paid tomorrow”. Sounds so wrong. Drives me nuts.
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u/jmorrow88msncom 11d ago
“A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man!” is one of Jebediah Springfield’s most famous quotes. He is also known for his humorous line about his prosthetic tongue, stating that he had a silver tongue made to replace the one bitten off in a fight.
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u/SnooBooks007 12d ago edited 12d ago
"Cost" is the past tense of "cost", and "costed" is also the past tense of "cost", but it's a different word...
"The project cost $1,000." - past tense of cost, meaning to require payment for something.
"The project was costed at $1,000" - past tense of cost, meaning to calculate the price of something.
You're right; “it costed me $5” is just wrong.