LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  Dr. Irvin Yalom has answered my question about why he wrote "Did she used to..." in his The Schopenhauer Cure . The correct form is "Did she use to..?" and the answer to the "error" is a phonetical one: The sound of the "t" blends with "use" to make it sound "used" and inadvertedly people fall into this grammatical ditch. A liaison that may sound far-fetched, but which is not. Try it.  This answer does satisfy me.  And I thank Dr. Yalom for his quick reply. 

  I have  discovered the life and work of Dr.  Irvin D. Yalom , eminent M.D. and fascinating writer. Currently I am reading his  The Schopenhauer Cure    and    When Nietzsche Wept , which I am enjoying, and which I venture to recommend. Dr. Yalom  is a bit pedantic, which I love, of course (welcome to the club!), and I suspect he dips into all kinds of dictionaries (as we all should) in order to pick the right word to discribe his thinking and his chracters' ideas. But... I stumbled into this sentence: "How did she used to do it?" which made me prick up my ears. To use  is a regular verb:  I use a knife to cut bread with. People used stones but now they use toilet paper . This is fine. Used to , however, means an action repeated in the past, habitual at a given time:  I used to to walk but now I don´t . Usually  =  suelo : Suelo ir al cine, I usually go to the movies. Used to  =  solía : Solía ir al cine, I...