grammaticality - Is "shined" correct? If so, is "he shined X on the tree" also correct?


Recently, I overhead a former professor of mine use the word shined, a word that makes me grammatically uncomfortable. She used it as following: "Then, after we shined a light on the other ball, what happened?..." My first question is: Is using shined mainstream, over what sounds better to my ear, shone? If so, is there any historical flip-flopping between the two usages? Secondly, if shined is in fact legit, can it be used transitively? Saying something like,



The light shined all throughout the night.



while odd, doesn't sound as bad to my ear as,



He shined the light on the ball throughout the night.



The latter sounds quite bad to my ear. Indeed, à propos the original question, can shone — the better sounding alternative to my ear — be used transitively?




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