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Proofing a manuscript, I found this in the middle of a chase scene:

Spotting an opening, I dived into it and was horrified to find it was a dead end.

Is “dived” a valid past tense of the verb “dive”? I've always used “dove”, but I'm not certain what the use is in UK English.

Cambridge shows “dived” as a valid past tense of “dive”, but which is more common? Do “dove” and “dived” have different shades of meaning, or are they used differently in different contexts?

tchrist
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Goodbye Stack Exchange
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    Dove, although frequently heard, was considered incorrect and marked wrong by teachers in the Northeastern USA circa 1960. It is now more generally used here, but still sounds wrong to me. –  Mar 27 '15 at 01:21

1 Answers1

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Wiktionary indicates that dived is the standard British English past tense of dive:

The past tense dove is found chiefly in North American English, where it is used alongside the regular (and earlier) dived, with regional variations; in British English dived is the standard past tense, dove existing only in some dialects. As a past participle, dove is relatively rare. (Compare Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary; The American Heritage Dictionary; The Cambridge Guide to English Usage)

F'x
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    Dove is certainly rare as a verb in British English. I had a mathematics teacher who used it as an affectation, so much so that he sometimes even used it as the present tense; he also wrote shew rather than show, for much the same reason. – Henry Mar 11 '11 at 21:37
  • It needs a broad accent, preferable fairly Northern, to carry it off. A bit like sware, clome, crew, and other strong pasts which are vanishing relics of ME. – Nicholas Wilson May 23 '11 at 19:20
  • ODO (http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/dive?q=dived) also refers to dove as specifically a US term. – TrevorD May 22 '13 at 12:30
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    @Henry I have a tendency to use the past participle diven as an affectation, just to drive home the point. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 11 '15 at 20:37