A reader has written to complain that a contributor to The Spectator used the construction ‘I was sat’.
A reader has written to complain that a contributor to The Spectator used the construction ‘I was sat’. Veronica has also shown me an article in the Daily Mail about sex tourists in Thailand, which says: ‘Sat at a crowded bar at 2 a.m. is Peter.’ This is a most unaccountable usage, rolling over us unstoppably. Yet when I turned to The Spectator (no relation) written by Joseph Addison for July 20, 1711, I found this: ‘The Court was sat before Sir Roger came; but notwithstanding all the Justices had taken their Places upon the Bench, they made room for the old Knight at the Head of them.’
Another source from 1700 has: ‘Being all sate down, we fell a talking.’ Later in the century Oliver Goldsmith does it: ‘They were scarcely sat down, before one of the housemaids came.’
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