Still working on those edits for ‘Samuel’s Girl’. The editor wanted to change a line and her alternative included the word ‘gotten’. That word will never appear in anything with my name on it. All the other edits I can work with or accept but that one is a deal breaker. It is the height of laziness and can always be replaced with a proper word. So I’ll argue about other edits, give in on most because the changes aren’t all that important, but on that one I am immovable. No.
Most changes are just changes into American spelling. Which is fair enough, it’s an American publisher.
No time to hunt out today’s antismoking hate, but I did spot the most impressive addition to an OO scale railway that I’ve ever seen.
It just needs rails…
He did it with boxes from breakfast cereals and whisky. Sounds like the kind of retirement I could enjoy.
Funny you should say that, I hate the word ‘got’. Not only is it a catchall for a real word but half the time you see or hear it it’s completely redundant.
Strange. I’m a bit of a language stickler when it comes to real writing, and I have a stubborn tinge of British in my spelling and style from reading my parent’s library in grade school, but I have no compunctions about got or gotten at all!
- MJM
I love the word “gotten”. I think it’s more American than English. Which may mean that in fact it’s an English word that fell out of use in England, but continued in America.
Please lighten up here LI. Descriptive beats prescriptive every time.
Although common usage has made the word legit, I hate the word “gotten.” I would let it slide when writing (or editing) dialogue, though. And Scrabble, because you would…
‘Gotten’ is in fact an old English word which fell into disuse here, but was enthusiastically adopted in the US, and has again become popular in the UK. I used to hate it, as I thought it was a lazy Americanism, but since discovering its origins (from reading ‘Mother Tongue’ by Bill Bryson, I’ve decided I like it much more.
My 2 cents worth ;P
What Frank and Randy said.
Don’t knock color over colour etc, british english has been corrupted by those crafty frenchmen.
Got is just lazy because we do not use the correct participle and just make got irregular
Gotten is standard US. Got is regarded as infra dig. Sorry bout that (he writes from the Deep South where he is enjoying the peas and rice)
Oh misbegotten gotten art thou a miss?
O misbegotten gotten, art thou amiss?
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Further thoughts.
Good for you, sir! May such foul words be expunged from the beauty of the English language.
Its shorter version, “got”, is also very much over-used – alas, even by royalty (Prince Charles uses it rather too much, I feel). It can be used well – “Got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head…” – but is most often used tautologically (“I have got a …” – what is wrong with “I have a ….”?).
I am aware that “gotten” it is “old” English – Jonathon Swift used it in Gulliver’s Travels – but its use nowadays merely shows laziness in thinking and speech construction, and, often enough, ignorance of the English language.
Radical Rodent
I am not a gotten fan. It is American and has no place in English writing unless it is being used as slang to mimic Americanism.
Sorry Frank, and other gotten fans. I take my students to task often for using it in essays (unless it is used as above, and they get marked down for it.