riveted "on" or "to"

[blueskies]

Hi, everyone!

Would you say: "I know you did it," said Sam, his eyes riveted to Maggie's nervous face. or "I know you did it," said Sam, his eyes riveted on Maggie's nervous face. ?

 

[GoesStation]

Only the second, unless Sam and Maggie are victims of a particularly nasty metalworker.

 

[probus]

Only the second, unless Sam and Maggie are victims of a particularly nasty metalworker.

With all respect, riveted to sounds fine to me.

 

[probus]

I am beginning to suspect that blueskies is not the native-speaking Canadian academic that he/she pretends to be.

 

[JMurray]

Both "riveted on" and "riveted to" seem fine to me.
The Ngram has them running almost neck and neck in recent decades.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra...ct_url=t1;,riveted to;,c0;.t1;,riveted on;,c0

 

[Raymott]

Neither sounds right to me in regard to faces. In the right context, I'd use "rivetted onto".
Note the BrE/AusE spelling. This doubling of a letter is omitted in a lot of similar words in AmE.

 

[JMurray]

In the right context, I'd use "rivetted onto".

To mean being attached by a rivet, I would also tend to use "onto something", although "to something" sounds okay to me.
The straps were riveted (on)to the roof.

 

[Raymott]

I'd use a single t. The word stress is on the first syllable.

The word stress is also on the first syllable in travelled, ravelled, devilled, (l), bucketted, fidgetted (t), etc. These are all included in mainstream dictionaries.

I admit that this usually occurs with 'l' words.

https://howtospell.co.uk/double-l-spelling-rule
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rivetted

 

[jutfrank]

My tuppence worth: I wouldn't use riveted at all, but if I did, I'd probably say riveted to Maggie's face.

 

[Raymott]

Words ending in '-el' are an exception to the general rule in BrE.
rivalled/rivaled - doesn't end in -el. Nor does devilled, which I've already given.
http://grammarist.com/spelling/rival

When I tried to find 'riveted', eight dictionaries were listed. None appeared for 'rivetted'. The score in the 'fidgeted' vs 'fidgetted' match was 13:2.
So, 2 out of 15 uses of fidgetted/fidgeted used a double t. I would be more impressed with your argument if it were 0 out of 15.

Incidentally, the forms with two ts are marked as incorrect as I type this.

I've already given https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rivetted
I'll add "verb (used with object), riveted, riveting or (especially British) rivetted, rivetting."
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/rivetting

I don't want to argue about this; it's not worth it. I was only giving information. I was not arguing that the correct spelling used the double letters, only that in many cases, the doubled letters are still considered valid spellings.
So, I'll retract the assertion that BrE uses the doubled letters, and instead will assert that there are legitimate minority spellings (of this sort) that are used less often in AmE.

About the red lines under words, that would be a function of the word list that this editor uses. I get red lines under all the "our" words, such as honour, favour, humour. You're not going to tell me that this means they are spelled/spelt wrongly, are you? (Red line under 'spelt' as well, despite it being accepted by Oxford Dictionary).