Would you or i have gotten off so lightly ?.....

[bazwillrun]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...and-politics-17310549

I dont think so

[boxtops]

New Judge, I am glad you got there before me...

[bazwillrun]

He was lucky to have avoided jail

http://www.independen...oid-jail-7546563.html

[jno]

he may think so, I don't.

[DaisyNonna]

'Gotten' has no part in my vocabulary.

[Quizmonster]

I totally agree, NJ. However, my contribution was not intended to be a response to the actual question, but rather to two of the replies already ON the thread, one on gotten and the other on Scottish drinking problems.

(The Concise Scots Dictionary lists under get, "past participle also gottin, gattin etc.")

Daisy, I am a Scot, but gotten has "no part in my vocabulary" either on a day-to-day basis. Nevertheless, that is no reason for other Scots not to use it as freely as they choose...and they do.

[jno]

gotten goes fine with ill- and for-. It's curious that it has otherwise dropped out of standard English English. The same seems to have happened with "fall" for autumn. Fortnight survives, sennight does not, and neither is used in America. "Affect" is slowly being replaced by "impact". "Under way" is turning into one word - having, it seems, once been "under weigh" (of ships).

There's just no telling with language.

[Quizmonster]

J, the 'no-tellingness' is a major element in language's beauty and fascination.

[jno]

very true, QM, but it makes life tough for anyone trying to *learn* the language. I'm just reading a (modern) Baedeker guidebook. The English is perfectly correct... and yet you can tell at once that it's been translated from another language (German, I presume), because while the words are right and the grammar is right, it is simply not quite English as she is spoke.

[Quizmonster]

Absolutely, J...and have you recently studied the instruction-manual that came with any sort of electronic device made in China? Translated material in any circumstances is only as good as the translator. I can see why a small oriental manufacturer might cavil at hiring a bilingual native-English speaker, but find it harder to grasp why a major German publisher should do likewise. But what the hey!

[sandyRoe]

And you don't hear 'misbegotten' as often as you used to.

[Quizmonster]

On the very rare occasions when I see the word misbegotten, I invariably remember the famous Spencer Tracy speech in Inherit the Wind which included the following question about the Bible and sex, in reference to the seemingly endless "and A begat B and B begat C and C begat D" there...

Drummond: How'd they go about all this begattin'?
Brady: What do you mean?
Drummond: Well, I mean, did they begat in much the same way as folks get themselves begat today?

Misbegotten, of course, means illegitimate or ill-conceived if applied to a plan for example and, as you say Sandy, it is rarely used today. Pity, really, given that it could be so handy in describing most of the current coalition's policies!

[mike11111]

Gotten is a correct but archaic past participle of Got. It is used in the Book of Common Prayer. Even today we speak of ill-gotten gains.

[Quizmonster]

Mike, I mentioned ill-gotten earlier in the thread as being virtually the only remaining use of gotten still extant in standard English. Gotten is otherwise - rather like the Book of Common Prayer - archaic, except in its still-current Scottish day-to-day usage.