'Hard work never hurt anyone' Why not 'hurts'?r dh It QOo rD WikYYyd EDh
I saw this sentence:
Hard work never hurt anyone.
It's a good phrase, but I wonder why it is 'hurt' not 'hurts'? I think 'hurts' (3rd-person singular present) is more correct. Why is it 'hurt'?
3 Answers
In the idiom or proverb
Hard work never hurt anyone.
"hurt" is actually a past tense. It could be recast as
Hard work never did anyone harm.
It can be confusing that for such particular English verbs, the simple past form is identical to one of the present tense forms (plural).
Much the same meaning could be expressed in the present tense, as
Hard work never hurts anyone.
But for whatever historical reason, this is not the form that became a standard fixed phrase.
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The sentence describes (and negates) a hypothetical. Simple past is often used for expressing such meanings. If we were to affirm or deny a general truth or falsehood, we use present. I. E. "smoking kills". Using the past here tells us that it is not a fact, but opinion. – Stian Yttervik yesterday
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1note that "to hurt" is not a regular verb! – vinnief 20 hours ago
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3To make your recasting clearer, how about
hard work HAS never hurt anyone? – simonalexander2005 16 hours ago -
1Instead of the example "Hard work never did anyone harm", it would be clearer to illustrate with "Hard work never harmed anyone" – Nayuki 11 hours ago
I agree with the accepted answer, but would add that using the past tense also adds playfulness.
Maybe you want to avoid hard work, but other people worked hard (past tense) and it didn't hurt them. So it shouldn't hurt you either, but I can't say this for sure.
If it did, you would be the first one in history who got hurt by hard work.
UPDATE:
Regarding the comments that you can in fact get hurt by hard work, it is not "hurt" in the literal sense, i.e. being hurt physically. It is "hurt" as in being disadvantaged. What is meant is that hard work will not disadvantage you, it will benefit you, so you should do it.
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1Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. haha – Aequitas 5 hours ago
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1I think history is rife with examples of persons harmed by hard work. – trognanders 4 hours ago
It's a reflection on what has happened (or not!) previously. It's a statement of 'fact' that has (theoretically) been proven in the past. So it's said as a past tense word.
We couldn't really say 'hurts' as the hard work would be happening now, while we speak. It makes more sense to speak about something that happened previously - many times!
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2I think you are being to definate. Provers or proverb-like stastements can be in the present tense. There isn't the degerwee of logic andf rule-bounded ness this answer implies – David Siegel yesterday
