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'The Hindu,' an Indian daily, reports:

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitely casted his vote at Chimanbhai Patel Institute opposite Karnavati club.

Does the verb cast have a form as casted?

Kris
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Essen
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2 Answers2

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The Oxford English Dictionary records casted as being used as the past tense of cast from the Middle English period to the sixteenth century. The latest citation showing its use is dated 1526. If it is making a comeback, I haven’t heard or seen it, but that may be because it is not widespread in contemporary British English. The British National Corpus has only one record for casted, and that is in the theatrical sense. The Corpus of Contemporary American English, on the other hand, has 24 records.

Barrie England
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    "Nick Clegg casted his vote in Sheffield yesterday" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-to-seek-return-to-commons-in-2015-7712387.html?action=gallery&ino=3 – Kris Dec 17 '12 at 10:56
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    @Kris. There you are then. But one swallow . . . – Barrie England Dec 17 '12 at 10:58
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    I had thought so, too. "Across the whole of Merseyside, just 12.7 per cent of the electorate casted a vote." http://www.sthelensreporter.co.uk/news/local/low-turnout-for-police-vote-1-5158275 "Overall 75, 74 percent of the votes casted were in favour, so you know, we've got something badly wrong in the Church of England that we can't actually deliver this after all this time." http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/faith-belief-videos/1736/-sadness-over-vote-against-women-bishops.html – Kris Dec 17 '12 at 11:04
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    Saying casted certainly sounds like an error to my ear. Even in compounds like to forecast, it doesn’t change: “Yesterday they forecast temperatures in the 70s by noon today.” – tchrist Dec 17 '12 at 12:47
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    @tchrist. The OED, without comment, gives both forecast and forecasted as the past tense and past participle. – Barrie England Dec 17 '12 at 13:04
  • @tchrist merriam-webster: 1 fore·cast verb -ˌkast; fȯr-ˈkast\ forecast also fore·cast·ed | fore·cast·ing. weather world 2010 Univ Ill U-C: (adj.) High and Low Pressure Centers on forecasted temperatures ; more. – Kris Dec 17 '12 at 14:03
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"Does the verb cast have a form as casted?"

Yes. This may surprise you, but grammarist explains:

Casted
The verb cast is conventionally uninflected in the past tense and as a past participle. Casted is an old form—examples are easily found in texts from every century from the 14th to the present—but it has given way to cast in modern English. In current usage, however, casted is gaining ground, especially where cast means either (1) to assemble actors for a performance, or (2) to throw out bait and/or a lure on a fishing line. (Both these senses have extended metaphorical uses where casted is likewise used at least some of the time). Many people object to casted, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is catching on and not likely to go away soon.
The total votes casted in Uniontown on Tuesday were 1,431, which represented a turnout of 55 percent. [Associated Press via Real Clear Politics]
[emphasis mine]

And not to confuse with other 'genuine' casted:

  • Caste hereditary class of Hindu society v, adj. casted See also: Elizabeth Isichei
  • Cast Operator: () (programming) A type cast provides a method for explicit conversion of the type of an object in a specific situation. v. cast, casted
  • An orthopedic cast, body cast or surgical cast, is a shell, frequently made from plaster, encasing a limb v, adj. casted
Kris
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    Surely the third of your other 'genuine' examples involves the same word but one of the many different senses given for example at the AHDEL. I'd guess that the second also involves polysemy rather than homonymy. At http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/cclass/int/sx4bb.html is: The name of the operator comes from the term typecast... And typecast is acknowledged to be a compound. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 17 '12 at 09:44
  • @EdwinAshworth No contest. Those are cases of 'genuine inflection' unlike casted a vote. – Kris Dec 17 '12 at 09:50
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    It does become complicated when different polysemes of a verb conjugate differently (rather than have different options for all senses). Set in the sense of place (children) within a set (at school) always, in my experience, has setted as past tense. I should think only Gollum would use that form for a jelly. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 17 '12 at 09:54
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    Just pointing out that your first bulleted example involves a totally different word (casted). I have to move on quickly when I hear bidded - it's bad enough having to deal with yesterday, he bid on a Ming vase / bade his friends at college farewell. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 17 '12 at 09:58
  • @Kris: Thanks for the detailed explanation. I was wondering when did the cut off happen. Starting when did the grammarist mark casted as acceptable? For the year 2000, Google ngram from its American English corpus gives the ratio of usage of cast versus casted as 0.000364573% to 0.000007096% That's a huge gap in usage pattern. With such a gap can we still say that casted is back in vogue? – Essen Dec 17 '12 at 10:54
  • To cast a play descends from the ordinary verb cast by way of a secondary sense of the noun cast; I think it has to be treated as a back-formation and therefore a distinct word. On the other hand the regularized past tense with the compound broadcast has I think been pretty widely accepted. – StoneyB on hiatus Dec 17 '12 at 11:01
  • @Essen Note that Books and Dictionaries take time to catch up with developments in usage and trends. Reliable and respected news and media sources are more up to the minute (sometimes ahead of the times, agreed). nGrams is an excellent tool for historical research, and to some extent, modern history/ nearly current, in the corpora. – Kris Dec 17 '12 at 11:12
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    @StoneyB You can say broadcasted? Really? I can’t. – tchrist Dec 17 '12 at 13:04
  • @tchrist I don't say it, because I'm a dinosaur. But I've heard it a lot for a long time -- longer than any of those others. I've never heard "casted" a play, for instance. – StoneyB on hiatus Dec 17 '12 at 15:26
  • @Kris Thanks. I guess, 'The Hindu' got it right, then. As I look at this thread and the other thread started by B E, it appears to me that perhaps we are in the cusp; the seemingly incorrect usage of 'casted' is giving way to its acceptability. – Essen Dec 18 '12 at 04:38
  • I would not go so far as to call it incorrect to the extent that the use of casted (where cast is the prescribed word) has its uses. Some times, has cast sounds odd, casted more natural, without distracting the reader with grammatical propriety. – Kris Dec 18 '12 at 05:45
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    I used this answer to decide if I should name a variable casted – JacobIRR Oct 29 '19 at 17:50
  • @JacobIRR Appropriately enough. Good Luck. – Kris Oct 30 '19 at 10:16