LANGUAGE CORNER
"Lightening"; "Forecasted"
Lightening Was Forecasted?
Lisa Aug of the Office of Communications at the Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children found this on a television network's Web site: "Powerful storms are forecasted for parts of the region again tonight." "Forecasted?" she asked, in obvious dismay. Alas, some major dictionaries do give that form as a second-choice past tense, and it turns up a lot. But it looks and sounds ignorant. "Forecast" does the job for the past as well as the present. In the same spot, Ms. Aug also found a story on fires in the West "spelling the electrical phenomenon 'lightening.' " That's also suprisingly common, but fortunately the dictionaries don't seem to support it, even as a copout alternative. The word is "lightning" — no "e" — unless we're making something literally or figuratively less weighty or less dark. Lightning, as it happens, has a lightening effect on the sky.
