The spelling -in' is sometimes used to indicate that a speaker uses the G-dropping pronunciation, as in makin' for making. The pronunciation with rather than is a long-established one. Old English verbs had a present participle in -ende and a verbal noun (gerund) form in -ing(e). These merged into a single form, written -ing, but not necessarily spoken as such – the pronunciation may be inherited from the former distinct present participle form. The variant appears to have been fashionable generally during the 18th century, with the alternative being adopted in educated speech around the 1820s, possibly as a spelling pronunciation. Today, G-dropping is a feature of colloquial and non-standard speech of all regions, including stereotypically of Cockney, Southern American English and African American Vernacular English. Its use is highly correlated with the socioeconomic class of the speaker, with speakers of lower classes using with greater frequency. It has also been found to be more common among men than women, and less common in more formal styles of speech. The fact that the pronunciation was formerly associated with certain upper-class speech is reflected in the phrase huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ (used in referring to country gentry who frequently engaged in such field sports). Further evidence that this pronunciation was once standard comes from old rhymes, as in this couplet from John Gay's 1732 pastoral Acis and Galatea, set to music by Handel: Shepherd, what art thou pursuing, Heedless running to thy ruin? was presumably pronounced "shepherd, what art thou pursuin', heedless runnin' to thy ruin", although this would sound very odd in an opera today. Similarly, in the poetry of Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), -ing forms consistently rhyme with words ending in , as in this verse of A Ballad on the Game of Traffic, where "lining" rhymes with "fine in": But Weston has a new-cast gown On Sundays to be fine in, And, if she can but win a crown, 'Twill just new dye the lining. Reduction of /mb/ and /mn/ In later Middle English, the final cluster was reduced to just (the plum-plumb merger). This affects words such as lamb and plumb, as well as derived forms with suffixes, such as lambs, lambing, plumbed, plumber. By analogy with words like these, certain other words ending in , which had no historical sound, had a silent letter added to their spelling by way of hypercorrection. Such words include limb and