Pled versus pleaded

@Jasper - I started off by intending to give thou, thee etc as an example, when I realised that was a disappearance rather than a change in a word form, which is why I chose ye, the old subject form of you, which is still shown in some nineteenth century grammars. Perhaps you should go and live in Yorkshire:

"Watching the people get lairy
It's not very pretty I tell thee"

Kaiser Chiefs (Leeds)

Apparently, the OED has the first citation for snuck from as long ago as 1887.

Google Books goes slightly earlier; this is from 1881:

"Well, sir, your boy Aleck got a straw, snuck up behind a sorrel mule, tickled him on the hind leg, and ..."

http://books.google.pl/books?id=J5hMAAAAMAAJ&q=snuck&dq=snuck&hl=en&ei=oSsnTvfuNsfEsgbUw8CXCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y

repeated a bit later (1886) in slightly less standard English:

"Well, sir, yer boy Aleck got a straw, snuck up behin' a sorrel mule, tickled him on the heels, an ..."

One from 1889:

'False doctrine snuck in amongst them with a great and holy appearance'

And another from 1895:

"I have just sandbagged the messenger and got a cool ten thousand out of his safe, when a beastly opposition train robber snuck in on me, slugged me, and took and made off with all the stuff"

Pled sounds better; do not worry about writing; in court, "...the defendant 'pled guilty....' at a past date...."; King James bible sound; traditional; Black's law dictionary is definitive.
Atty, 40 years, retired public defender, pled 1,000's guilty, in fact.

@Bob Foster - Being Scottish, where it is also used in court, I have no objection to 'pled', indeed rather like it. But on a point of information, or however you lawyers put it, although it may have a King James Bible sound, it doesn't actually appear in the KJV, whereas 'pleaded' does, three times. :)

I hate to say it but there is no reason to hate either form. 'pleaded' is actually older. This word comes from French so was not irregular when borrowed. It came to be pronounced 'pled' in some contexts after analogy with 'read.' Now that I've said that, I want to be clear I don't advocate a particular form. Let people speak how they want. 'Pled' is fine. It is completely untrue that people read or write worse than the generation before t hem. Language and spelling naturally change over time. Since language has existed, these complaints have existed. And no, it does not mean you are smarter than young people. You are just pretentious, old or both.

I've been wondering what happened to "pled" also. "Pleaded", to me, sounds retarded and lacking sophistication. I've also been noticing other words being "dumbed down" in a similar fashion. It saddens as well as aggravates.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/user/reset/114021941/1456408387/6XhTN7-OJdvGSG48kwUtoEotCB2P8xFywznwc1op0vE

The verb "plead" has 2 meanings. One meaning is similar to "beg;" She pleaded for leniency, or I pleaded to the principal on my child's behalf. This verb needs an object.

The secondary (less common, legal) meaning is "to make a statement about the facts" Ex: He pled not guilty. The officer pled his ignorance on the matter. Or the fixed expression "He pled the fifth." This is the only sense where "entered a plea of" could be synonymous. This is a stative verb.

For the first meaning, the past form is "pleaded (for / to)." For the secondary (legal) meaning, the past tense form is "pled."

I did legal work for many years in the US, and I currently teach English. This is my informed opinion, and I'm sticking to it - although I really don't care which term people use.

Well I just wanted to say that Proper Grammar is a lie there is no such thing, and we shouldn't conform to it we should get rid of it altogether.

@Sombody123

Yep, just like speed limits and taxes.

Pleaded is correct grammar, pled is what sounds more pleasing to the ear because it's been used for so long, mainly by American journalist. But in the past few years we've found it being replaced with pleaded, as the main authorities on grammar say it's the correct choice.

I hate hearing every news story using the (wrong) word: pleaded. I agree that there is a perfectly good word to express the past tense of entering a plea, and that is pled. Even now, when I type "pled", the auto-spell underlines it in red, as if I've typed a non-word. What's next? Now that the media says that I've pleaded at court, should I say that I've readed the book, or that I've feeded the dog? Perhaps I should have leaded a revolt when the media began using pleaded instead of pled.

We are not talking connotation and de oration here. Plead is plead and the past is pleaded, end of discussion. There is no pled!

Re: 'There is no pled!'

To quote The Everly Brothers 'Wake up little Suzie'.

Pled is alive and well and living in many Scottish courtrooms.

I guess it's my age 81, but fought rather than fit or fighted as past tense for fight seems right to me. However, lit rather than lighted as past tense for light seems right to me. I guess to be consistent Joshua should have fit the battle of Jericho as the song says. I certainly do not go along with lighted or fighted although I have never heard fighted. Of course, I am a fan of fled over fleeded and pled over pleaded although my spell checker is not.

That makes a lot of sense. Almost my whole life I've heard "pled" and only recently have heard people use "pleaded". "Pleaded" does generate more of an emotional appeal and makes a person who admits guilt seem if they are remorseful.
Using "thru" instead of "through" also bugs me. I can't stand that my boss at work, in charge of online writers, does this. It's English. Yes, language is fluid and English is well known for backstabbing other languages in a back alley, but that doesn't mean you should just lop off letters because you can make the same sound with less.
I also like "leapt" instead of "leaped", "snuck" instead of "sneaked", and "hung" instead of "hanged". The latter in all of these examples just sounds as wrong as "pleaded".
And just to get it off my chest, acronyms are not words. That's why we call them acronyms. I can't believe "LOL" is in the dictionary.

IT IS PLED!

My uncle was publicly executed in the sewers surrounded by hobos

I totally agree that the use of "pled" sounds correct, while using "pleaded" sounds babyish to me. Example;
The defendant pled guilty.
The newspapers and online news reports lately seem to always be using pleaded; I don't know when they changed. My mother was always a stickler for grammar and she would have used "pled." She had 2 uncles and a grandfather who were lawyers, so I wonder if she picked up "pled" from them.

I want to add that my mother's grandfather and 2 uncles who were lawyers were of Scottish heritage, but it was way back there. The original ancestor came to America in the 1700s. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but "pled" has always sounded right to me. Using "pleaded" sounds ignorant to me. Besides, we have "bleed-bled," "feed-fed," and "read-read" (the last sounding like "red").

I cringe every time I hear someone say pleaded, when it should be pled! It's been 'pled' all my life...why did it suddenly change to this incorrect use of English?

I completely agree and have been fed up with with media using the improper ‘pleaded’ over ‘pled’. Thank you for sharing and feeling my pain in the English.

It's pled. Pleaded is not a word. It entered into the record (as old French) through court fillings primarilly submitted by English Second Language lawyers, judges & clerks then ignorantly rebroadcast without correction by lazy journalists. Some excuses float about acadenia and the interwebs regarding the widespread appathy towards the blatent grammer violation, most revolving around how hard uncommon verbs are for lazy people like; English teachers, journalists and newspaper editors to learn.

I totally agree: "pleaded" is trying to be "nice" and avoid a monosyllabic word (possibly because many obscene words are monosyllabic). "Pled" rings right to my ear.

I won't seek to speak eloquently (as you all are so capable of), but just to state how I feel. This brings to mind the word "conversate". No such thing! After typing the word, the dictionary didn't recognize it as legitimate, and underlined it in red. Grammatically correct would be "converse". Same as using "pleaded" to define an answer to a charge. Sounds as dumb as "freezed". As was mentioned previously, "pleaded" is representative of someone who begged, whereas "pled" was the submission of a plea. Let's get it right. I'm tired of the constant changes to things we know are correct. We practice, so hard, to be politically correct [that's another story], so why not employ that same enthusiasm in being literally correct?!

It seems like a leftist conspiracy to simplify for people who speak English as a second language. It is just the first thing to go. Couldn’t even find pled in an online dictionary before I frustratedly googled “What happened to pled”.
How does this happen. Who gets the media to line up like this?
Glad to find this page and the comments here.
Thank you for being here.

I agree with you 100 percent, this has been bothering me for a long time.

I automatically hear pled, when ever I see pleaded.

I agree that "pled guilty" makes more sense. I get a little irked every time I see that someone in the news "pleaded guilty". There are so many things we cannot control.

Totally agree - 'pled' sounds much better, and it's surprising how fast things change; and for no good reason.

personally, each time i have heard "he/she pleaded guilty, it has frustrated me that they did not say pled. in my mind i have always replaced it with pled as it has always been a past tense word for me. and it shall remain so.

It is quite bizarre. I noticed this, yes about 5 years ago, as you say. What puzzled me was how it became universal in the media almost overnight. No one said "he pled guilty".
"He pleaded", as far as I am concerned has a completely different meaning, inferring that the person was in imminent danger and was asking to be spared from imminent harm.
There are two questions; how this happened and why?
My gut feeling is that there are certain websites (often American) that give advice on use of English and the solitary advisor for the site just chose pleaded as the best option for most purposes. Obviously I disagree but the younger, more easily influenced media types just fell into line.
Today though, I noticed another similar change; speeded instead of sped. Should we worry? Am I annoyed? Well, yes and yes, but clearly people like me or sites like this one don't have the influence to counter the behaviour of media types.

That is a cogent observation: pleaded is indeed more emotional (or describes a situation involving more emotion). The change in citations in the media observed and commented on by many respondents can be laid at the feet of the two big style manuals (Chicago and AP) who--for reasons of their own, one must assume--laid down the law about that time.
As some clever wag said, "He pled guilty, then pleaded with his wife to forgive him."
A reporter at a rural Oregon newspaper that carried my syndicated language column ("The Language We Use") back in the '80s raised the question then--and I feel uneasy to this day that I never addressed the issue in my column.
Life in Tropical North Queensland helps assuage any feelings of guilt, so I plead with you not to blame me.