Past participles in the English language are normally simple enough for native speakers, but what about those awkward words? As eagle-eyed readers might already have guessed from the title of this blog post, I am thinking particularly of the word ‘rota’ here.
This word cropped up in the office recently as I was writing an e-mail and I suddenly discovered – I am not sure how to write this as a past participle. What is the past participle of rota? Should it be rota’d, rota’ed, rotad or something else?
Can ‘rota’ be used as a verb?
The word rota is normally used as a noun. Everyone is happy with that, especially those who are looking to draw up a rota.
But very often the word rota is used as a verb, meaning to put something or someone into a rota. But what is the past participle of rota? If you rota someone in for something, are they rota’d in?
In that case, perhaps that should be rota’d on to do something – or just rota’d to do it – a subject for another blog post on English prepositions perhaps…
Past participle of rota: rotad, rotaed or rota’d?
The natural choice seems to be to write the past participle of rota as rotad. But there is the niggling feeling that something is missing. This doesn’t look like the word rota anymore and just leaves me asking what is a rotad?
Again, rota’d seems a better choice because it still looks like the original word rota. Although purists will question the grammatical correctness of using an apostrophe here. And rotaed? That just looks weird.
Of course we could avoid the issue altogether by using a different word entirely, perhaps rostered or even scheduled.
But this would indicate that we can’t use the word rota as a verb at all, which surely can’t be true. Many English speakers use rota as a verb and it sounds right.
Words ending with letter ‘a’
Then what about other similarly problematic words that end with the letter ‘a’ if we want to use them as verbs?
We cha cha cha’d at the weekend and conga’d yesterday, then rumba’d and salsa’d this morning.
All this dancing is making me want a cup of tea and a sit down…
But there are other words that don’t require such nimble feet. Subpoena for example or the language of the farmyard – has anyone baa’d or moo’d recently?
There is no such problem for words ending in an ‘e’. For example, the words ‘free’ and ‘tiptoe’ easily take a ‘d’ ending to create their past tenses: ‘freed’ and ‘tiptoed’.
So it seems that words ending in the letter ‘e’ escape the problem of the uneasy past participle. Their final ‘d’ fits neatly after their ‘e’. But where does that leave words ending in ‘a’?
There seems to be no definite ruling on the correct past participle of rota or the correct past tense usage for other words ending in ‘a’.
Is this a gap in English grammar? Perhaps it is simply a matter of taste.
What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments box.
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Was really interested to find this blog as recently had this dilemma myself! I came to write a memo re. rotas and suddenly realised I did not know how to write the verb. I wanted to tell someone they had been ‘rotad in’ – but it just didn’t look right. Is there some professor of English out there who can put us straight?
The simple rule in English for making the past participle of a verb is to add ‘ed’ onto the root of the verb, unless it already ends with an ‘e’, in which case just the ‘d’ is added to make the ending ‘ed’.
So. ‘rotaed’ would be correct, even if it does appear a little weird to look at.
‘Rotad’ would break the rule, and is thus incorrect.
‘Rota’d’ could possibly be used in Old English, using the apostrophe to stand for the missing ‘e’, but in modern English the full ‘ed’ would be appended.
Hi Kevin, thanks for your comment. ‘Rotaed’ certainly does look strange, but as you say it makes perfect sense. You also make an interesting point about Old English, where an apostrophe was often used in place of the old letter ‘e’. It seems that ‘rotaed’ is the proper spelling, despite its odd appearance. Do other readers agree?
An interesting problem and one I have just encountered. I chose to avoid the issue in the end by not using rota as a verb since I decided it might confuse the reader. While rotaed might be the correct version it might be misunderstood (looks like a spelling mistake e.g. rotated minus the ‘t’). I think rota’d might be better understood but to avoid confusion I opted to avoid the problem by only using rota as a noun. Thanks for the interesting discussion though.
Thanks for your message, Trevor. Yes, using ‘rota’ only as a noun avoids the issue nicely! Instead of ‘I rotaed him in’ we could opt for ‘I added him to the rota’. Perhaps this is preferable to avoid confusion for the reader. What do others think?
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I just came across this thread. Is the word used supposed to be ‘rostered’?
Just found this through Google from wondering the same myself. My natural tendency is to use “rota’d” with the idea that it really is just a variant of “rotated” anyway. A “rota” is a rotation of shifts.
I have used rota’d in written text, but technically, I believe the correct past participle of rota is rostered. However, seeing as the word rota is more commonly used than the word roster to describe it, then the use of the apostrophised rota’d does seem to make more sense!
Roster A list of individuals or groups
Rota A schedule that allocates some tasks and or responsibility’s
looked it up in the OED (I only have the 1971 edition)
Rota is not listed as a verb there.
Subpoena has examples given both of subpoenaed and subpoena’d in the usage given.
This thread is also relevant
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/373774/past-tense-ending-for-verbs-ending-in-a