“On this rainy Sunday,” wrote Damon Hack in The New York Times, “the Patriots weaved together their latest bad-weather victory over the Ravens.”

Today’s quiz question has nothing to do with spelling, grammar or syntax. Today we’re talking about a writer’s ear – and yes, we’re back to the sound of written language. Constant readers know of my theory that, although we read with our eyes, subconsciously we read also with our ears.

Note that the Timesman wrote that the Patriots “weaved together.” Would “wove together” have been a better verb? The meanings are identical. Given a choice between a long “i” and a long “o,” Hack’s ear responded perfectly. Doubtless there are times when “wove” works better than “weaved,” but last November in the Times, those Patriots properly weaved.

Contemplate, if you please, the infinite richness of our tongue. We are not cursed – we are blessed – with roughly 200 irregular verbs. Of these, perhaps 20 regularly test the writer who is sensitive to the sound and feel of language.

Let us suppose we are describing a jungle confrontation. For example, “Foot by silent foot, the lion (choose your verb) closer to the unsuspecting moose.” Creeped closer? Crept closer? Sneaked closer? Snuck closer? What did our lion do then? He leaped upon his prey. Or leapt upon it? Semantically speaking, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference. The moose was noosed. (Yes, I know there are no meese in Tanganyika, but in the exemplary sentence I needed a one-syllable word.)

A woman writer of my intimate acquaintance cast her vote for crept, sneaked and leaped. She has an excellent ear. And a smile to die for.

When the prince proposed to Camilla, how did he go about it? He kneeled before her. Or knelt before her? Does your writer’s ear hear a long vowel or a short one?

Tell me about that cashmere sweater in the dryer. It used to be size 12. Now it’s a skinny 10. Evidently it shrank. Or, it shrunk. My own antennae vibrate in favor of shrunk. To my ear, “shrunk” sounds shrunkier than shrank. It suggests a total loss. Look, it shrunk! Rhymes with dunk, funk, gunk, hunk, punk, skunk, slunk, stunk, all with unpleasant vibes.

Not so very long ago, the only acceptable past tense of “drag” was a plain vanilla “dragged.” To have said that before the wedding, Camilla looked like something the cat drug in would have been not merely unwarranted but also “nonstandard.” The giant Webster’s of 1934 deemed “drug” either “dialectal” or “illiterate.” Seventy years later, this ugly caterpillar may be doing the butterfly bit. In his “Modern American Usage,” Bryan Garner reviews the evidence supporting the verb’s evolution from the clearly comic to the almost respectable.

To make his point, Garner quotes President Bill Clinton in a debate with Bob Dole in 1996: “Then we took comments as we always do. And there were tens of thousands of comments about how we ought to do it. That’s what drug it out.” Mr. Clinton may not rank among the world’s great grammarians, but in forming the past tense of “drag,” he’s ahead of the curve.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.