Word Confusion: Poled versus Polled

Posted June 7, 2018 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
17 Dec 2022

All I can think of is ouch, ouch-ouch-ouch, when I read about the guy poled by a survey taker. Shades of Vlad the Impaler!! I’m still cringing when I think about it.

I’m sure that wasn’t the vision the author meant for me to take away, but if they’re gonna misuse those words . . . what’s a girl to do?

Now, if that survey taker had merely polled the guy, I’d’ve thought “how boring and tedious” with most of my brain running through my grocery list.

NOTE: This post is addressing the root verbs pole and poll only.

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Poled	Polled
Pole Vaulter Andries Stephanus du Plessis, 1938, was photographed by Sam Hood courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales collection and has no known copyright restrictions, via Picryl. — He poled right over.	Strange Fruit by peederj is under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license. — Check out the moon centered between those polled branches.
Part of Grammar:
Morpheme: pole Noun: The focus in this post is on the verbal -ed (-ing) ending Verb, intransitive & transitive Third person present verb: poles Past tense or past participle: poled Present participle: poling	Morpheme: poll Verb, intransitive & transitive Third person present verb: polls Past tense or past participle: polled Present participle: polling
Verb, intransitive: Propel a boat by pushing a pole against the bottom of a river, canal, or lake To use ski poles to maintain or gain speed Verb, transitive: To push, strike, or propel with a pole To furnish with poles To support plants with a pole [Baseball] To make an extra-base hit by batting the ball hard and far [Metallurgy] To stir (molten metal, as copper, tin, or zinc) with poles of green wood so as to produce carbon, which reacts with the oxygen present to effect deoxidation	Verb, intransitive: Record the opinion or vote of [Of a candidate in an election] Receive a specified number of votes To vote at the polls Give one’s vote Verb, transitive: Record the opinion or vote of To receive at the polls, as votes To enroll (someone) in a list or register, as for purposes of taxing or voting To deposit or cast at the polls, as a vote To bring to the polls, as voters [Telecommunications & Computing] Check the status of (a measuring device, part of a computer, or a node in a network), especially as part of a repeated cycle Cut the horns off an animal, especially a young cow [Archaic] Cut off the top of (a tree or plant), typically to encourage further growth Pollard To cut short or cut off the hair, wool, etc., of an animal Crop Clip Shear To cut short or cut off hair, wool, etc.
Examples:
Verb, intransitive: They poled slowly across to the other bank. Paul and Miriam spent the afternoon poling down the river. They poled carefully along the riverbank. They alternated poling with harnessing up horses. Verb, transitive: The boatman appeared, poling a small gondola. Huck poled the raft downriver, waving at the riverboats as they passed. Arn poled barges up the placid river, charging the tourists an arm and a leg. We poled our way through powder to the clubhouse. After we poled the beans, we started in on the tomatoes. He poled a triple to deep right-center. He poled the copper to a tough-pitch stage.	Verb, intransitive: The Green candidate polled 3.6 percent. We polled this morning. He polled 10 000 votes. Can you believe he polled the whole town? Has young Henry polled those trees yet? Verb, transitive: There were four focus groups which polled the merchandise preferences of a sample group of customers. The network manager polled each Mac on the net. We must keep polling the device to keep it active. She is polled and two out of the three kids each year have been polled. I heard Brown is still polling his cattle. We polled the peach trees yesterday, Pa. There were some beautiful willows, and now the idiot Parson has polled them into wretched stumps.
Derivatives:
Adjective: polable, poleless, poleward, polewards, unpoled Adverb: poleward Noun: pole, poling Verb: overpole	Adjective: polled Noun: poll, pollard, pollee, poller, polls, pollster, repolling Proper noun: Poll Verb: pollard
History of the Word:
Late Old English pāl (in early use, it was without reference to thickness or length). Of Germanic origin, it is related to the Dutch paal and the German Pfahl, based on the Latin palus meaning stake.	Middle English, in the original sense of head and meaning an individual person among a number, from which developed the sense of number of people ascertained by counting of heads and then counting of heads or of votes in the 17th century. It may have been of Low German origin.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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