Is the use of 'shew' and 'glew' as the past tense of 'show' and 'glow' commonplace in some areas?

Question

A friend informed me recently that in some areas of England (he named Suffolk) it is relatively common to find 'incorrect' past tenses being used. His examples were:

• 'I shew him', instead of 'I showed him'
• 'It glew in the dark', instead of 'It glowed in the dark'

So, can anyone corroborate this or was he pulling my leg? And if this is true are there any other common 'incorrect' past tenses being used out there?

What if, for example, in Suffolk some think the past tense of wink follows the same rules as drink and sink? It could be rather embarrassing.

Answer 1

Shew was once the most common past participle of show, with shewn also appearing and shew or shewed for the past tense.

It also has a long use as the present tense.

For added confusion, shew seems to have changed pronunciation before it changed spelling, so if you come across shew in an older text you can't be sure whether it would be pronounced /ʃuː/ or pronounced /ʃəʊ/.

It remained very common for a long time especially in Scotland, north England, and Ulster but also various other places throughout the English-speaking world, particularly rural.

The Ulster part has an interesting example, there were propaganda posters around the time of the Treaty by those who wanted to remain in the United Kingdom and who were mostly in North East Ulster—the partition that created Northern Ireland having come about as a compromise between their concerns and that of the rest of the island—which would use "we'll shew 'em" precisely because it was a form more likely to be found among Ulstermen than among other Irishmen. (Though it would still have been common enough south of the future border then, as well).

It's increasingly rare as more standardised education increasingly deems it "wrong", but it's certainly not surprising to find.

Glew I have only heard of being used as a present-tense verb (now obsolete) or as the past of glow meaning "to stare" (now mostly obsolete). I wouldn't be amazed to hear that some dialect that had shew instead of showed or shown had a from glew instead of glowed modelled after it.

Answer 2

Those aren’t “incorrect”. They’re now regional rather than standard.

Outside of Scotland, they mostly haven’t been seen nor heard since the American Revolution. There are some 19^th century examples from Scots writers, however.

On shew

Regarding shew (past of show), the OED in particular states that:

The spelling shew, prevalent in the 18th c. and not uncommon in the first half of the 19th c., is now obs. exc. in legal documents. It represents the obsolete pronunciation (indicated by rhymes like view, true down to c 1700) normally descending from the OE. scéaw- with falling diphthong. The present pronunciation, to which the present spelling corresponds, represents an OE. (? dialectal) sceāw- with a rising diphthong.

The latest citation I could find for that sort of spelling antedates the American Revolution, albeit by a scant two years from when it was written (although not when it was published):

• 1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. (1776) V. 210 — A partridge is shewn him, and he is then ordered to lie down.

From Guy Mannering or The Astrologer, Scotsman Sir Walter Scott writes in 1815:

• 1815 Scott Guy M. x, — The chase then shewed Hamburgh colours, and returned the fire.

Scott also used that spelling for the noun:

• 1789 Scott in J. Haggard Rep. Consist. Crt. (1822) I. 13 — It often happens that on a shew of hands, the person has the majority, who on a poll is lost in a minority.

Shakespeare normally used show, but in one noun instance he used shew:

• 1611 Shaks. Cymb. v. v. 428 - As I slept, me thought Great Iupiter vpon his Eagle back’d Appear’d to me, with other sprightly shewes Of mine owne Kindred.

And no one less that Charles Dickens wrote in 1840:

1840 Dickens Old C. Shop xvi, — ‘Good!’ said the old man, venturing to touch one of the puppets,.. ‘Are you going to shew ’em to-night?’

It has an old-timey feel to it.

On glew

Saying glew is something else altogether. It is either much older and in Middle not Modern English, where it showed clear derivation from its Old English ancestor:

• C. 1000 Ælfric Saints’ Lives vii. 240 — Þæt fyr wearð þa acwenced þæt þær an col ne gleow.

• A. 1400 Isumbras 394 — Smethymene thore herde he blawe, And fyres thore bryne and glewe [rime ploghe].

Notice the mention of the rhyme with plow/plough in 1400.

So your glew is either pre-Modern English, or else it is a different verb altogether, and in the present tense. There’s one from glee:

• 1. intr. To make merry; to jest; to play on musical instruments.
• 2. To call loudly on.
• 3. trans. To afford entertainment or pleasure to; to make happy.

And another that appears pseudo-archaic from glow with the sense:

• 1. intr. To gaze, stare.

Both those glew verbs are now considered obsolete in Standard English.

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On hypotheticals

Your what-if is immaterial and unanswerable. These things happen all the time. Just because two different regions have two different ways of inflecting a verb doesn’t make one of those regions “wrong”. One or both — or even neither — may simply not be Standard English.

Answer 3

I'm also from Norfolk and regularly use 'shew' as the past tense of 'show', it is certainly still in common use. I have heard my stepdad say 'I mew the lawn' - 'mew' as past tense for 'mow'. Not heard that elsewhere though.

Answer 4

G.B. Shaw had a "textual peculiarity" in which he would spell the verb "show" as "shew." (See GB Shaw Monologue instructions.) Although it was spelled differently, it was nevertheless pronounced, "show." (Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland.)

I do not know about "glew," but "shew" was used by Shaw for present tense.

Answer 5

My mother (and most of my ancestors) are from Suffolk and they regularly say "shew". The other day Mum said "I 'ew' her some money" instead of 'owed' (but I don't know if she'd have written it and if so how she'd have spelt it).

Answer 6

I have in my possession a medal from the great war, posted to my great-uncle in 1921. The envelope is in reasonably good condition and has printed across the bottom, left-hand corner the legend:- "IF UNDELIVERED TO BE RETURNED TO THE OFFICER I/C OF RECORDS AT THE PLACE SHEWN IN THE POSTMARK OF ORIGIN." The text is in block capitals and the only punctuation is the final full-stop. The original postmark ("Nottingham") slid off the top corner of the envelope, but because it was mis-delivered, there is a second, clearly legible postmark dated "Fe 11 21" (February 11th 1921). The envelope is printed with [On His] "Majesty's Service" and an "Offi[cial] Paid" stamp. It seems obvious from this that the word "shewn" was still in use on official documents in England in the 1920's.

Answer 7

HP Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" uses shew exclusively, so it was in use in the 20th century as well. As for "glew", I've accidentally used it as the past tense of glow once or twice (as an American), so I wouldn't be surprised if it was common in some other dialects.