Boughten

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This was a household term in Des Moines, Iowa, when I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s. It was understood as the opposite of "homemade." Consequently, a "boughten" birthday cake, or dress, or whatever, was considered much more special than the homemade version. Kids whose families had  more money tended to enjoy "boughten" stuff, while cheeseparers like us had to make do with homemade. 

A competing adjective was "store-bought."

Pat O'Conner
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Date:    Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:00:19 -0700
From:    Bruce Hunter <bhunter3 at MINDSPRING.COM>
Subject: Re: Boughten

Also in western NY, Erie County, rural family, my mother's aunt (late),
until late 1990's.

Bruce Hunter

Steve Kleinedler wrote:
> As a native Michigander it is completely in my idiolect. When I go
> home, because I see my extended family in social contexts where food
> is involved, I hear it all the time in contrast to homemade.
>
> In fact, it wasn't until I was in my early thirties when I was working
> on that run of B in the American Heritage Dictionary did I come to
> find that not only is it regional, but pretty much everyone outside of
> Michigan finds it pretty weird.
>
> --short message because it's from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 11, 2010, at 5:07, Michael Quinion <wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> The leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron (Eton and
>> Oxford), was
>> visiting a big bakery in Bolton last week. He made a joke about his
>> failure to make his own bread: "So it'll be back to boughten loaves in
>> future." This adjective (meaning shop-bought) isn't known in standard
>> British English, though it was once in the dialects of southern
>> England
>> (almost completely defunct now, I believe). I'm wondering if Cameron
>> might
>> have picked it up in the US. Some newspaper comments I've read suggest
>> that, though it's known, it's deprecated as dialectal or regional.
>> What do
>> you say about its US distribution and status?
>>
>> --
>> Michael Quinion
>> Editor, World Wide Words
>> Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org
>>

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