Back in the 1950s, a freelance writer named W.F. Miksch regularly wrote for This Week magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. In a puckish moment he invented a character named Infield Ingersoll, a retired shortstop who had become a radio announcer for the Wescosville Wombats of some imaginary league. Ingersoll invented some imaginary verbs.

In one interview, Ingersoll recalled “the day us Wombats plew the Pink Sox.” After all, he reasoned, if the past tense of “slay” is “slew,” the simple past tense of “play” should be “plew.” In the same fashion, because the past tense of “teach” is “taught,” the intrepid infielder raught for a hard liner. Unfortunately, the sun blound him, because the verb “to blind” should follow the rule of the pocket watch: Today we wind our watch; yesterday we wound it.

You will rightly infer that today we are talking verbs – irregular verbs, and what to do about them. Professional linguists say that roughly 200 irregular verbs enliven our native tongue. In his “Modern American Usage,” Bryan Garner lists 174 of them, starting with abide/abode and ending with write/wrote. Garner is a very proper fellow, so he scorns most “nonstandard” forms, such as “snuck” as a past tense of “sneak.” He concedes that “proved” has long been the preferred past participle of “prove,” but he adds that “‘proven’ often ill-advisedly appears.”

I don’t know about that “ill-advisedly.” I have my own theory about use of many bastard verbal forms. It is to this effect: The choice should be governed not by fixed rules of conjugation, but by principles of context, cadence and connotation. These are not difficult terms to live by.

Example: An editorial writer for The Washington Post last year commented on the use of DNA evidence in a notorious case. A prudent technician had preserved evidence for 23 years – evidence that “has proven that an innocent man was wrongly convicted.” Garner would have swapped “has proven” in favor of “has proved.”

Obviously, there is not a penny’s worth of semantic difference between “has proved” and “has proven.” I too would have chosen “has proved.” Why? Not because of Garner’s guidance, greatly as I admire it. It is because “has proved” sounds more solid, more emphatic, more certain than “has proven.” There is a connotation of completion. Case finally closed.

In the same fashion, a writer may play with the past tenses of “to sneak.” The standard form, of course, is “sneaked,” but “snuck” creeps into print almost half the time. How is a writer to choose? What is the context? If we are writing a serious piece, we might say that a senator sneaked an amendment into the spending bill. In a lighter vein, he snuck it.

How would you call a choice between “weaved” and “wove”? Last November, a sportswriter for The New York Times wrote that the New England Patriots “weaved together their latest bad-weather victory, defeating the Ravens 24-3.” My ear concurs. Garner says that “weaved” is correct “only in the sense of ‘moved in a winding or zigzag way,”‘ which is how a successful fullback runs. It may be that “wove” works in other contexts: Mozart wove his magic melodies. The setting sun wove a tapestry across the evening sky. It’s your choice.

Last April, The Associated Press covered an NBA playoff game between Sacramento and Dallas. The game went down to the last few seconds, but at last “the Kings grinded out another victory.” I like “grinded.” Garner regards it as “erroneous,” but says it is gaining ground.

I would warn against “drug” as an alternative to “dragged,” except in a comic sense, but “drug” may be on its way to the grown-ups’ table. If “snuck” can make it, Britney Spears can look like something the cat drug in.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.