Difference between hanged and hung

I had someone ask me on Facebook what the difference is between hanged and hung. It can be confusing, so I hope I can set the record straight.

Grammarists generally recommend using hanged to refer to the process of killing by rope and hung for everything else.

That being said hung and hanged are technically interchangeable. If you were to say, “The executioner hung the criminal” or “He hanged the new painting above the mantle”, for example, you wouldn’t be wrong. Be prepared for a lambast, however.

So why the distinction?

In Old English, there were actually two words for hang: the intransitive hōn and the transitive hangian. The former is the forebearer of hung while hanged comes from the latter.

Today, hang stands for hōn and hangian, but their past tense forms still live on.