Right, indeed -- and I'd argue that "...he shined a flashlight on the lake's surface..." is, strictly, inaccurate usage, because the flashlight is not synonymous with the light it emits. (You can do a lot of other things with a flashlight that are not related to making light -- for instance, whacking someone upside the head with it. Also, "I shined my flashlight..." could be read to mean "I polished the shiny metal surface of my flashlight...", and that's potentially confusing.
This is nitpicky, I know. But I am inclined to stand firm on it, short of TNH or Deanna Hoak weighing in on the opposite side....
I think you're onto something here, but not the whole story. There are indeed two senses of the verb, but they have different rules for forming the past tense.
The past tense of "shine" in the sense of "polish" is always "shined." ("He shined his shoes"; never "he shone his shoes.")
The past tense of "shine" in the sense of "glow or gleam" is "shined" if it's transitive ("he shined the flashlight on the wall") and "shone" if it's intransitive ("the sun shone").
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-17 06:37 am (UTC)This is nitpicky, I know. But I am inclined to stand firm on it, short of TNH or Deanna Hoak weighing in on the opposite side....
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-17 06:27 pm (UTC)The past tense of "shine" in the sense of "polish" is always "shined." ("He shined his shoes"; never "he shone his shoes.")
The past tense of "shine" in the sense of "glow or gleam" is "shined" if it's transitive ("he shined the flashlight on the wall") and "shone" if it's intransitive ("the sun shone").