Boughten

[Ann Burlingham]

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 10:46 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Boughten
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>> 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.
>
> i'm familiar with it from my childhood, where it was the colloquial
> opposite of "homemade".  a more widespread colloquial opposite is the
> synthetic compound "store-bought" 'bought at a store', which  is a
> formal parallel to "homemade".  (we had a discussion of "store-bought"
> and the verb "store-buy" back-formed from it on ADS-L back in 2008,
> under the header "more back-formed shopping").
>
> that discussion had an offshoot thread on the variant "store-boughten"
> and the shorter "boughten" (with the -en variant of the past
> participle).
>>
>> 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.
>
> not weird in rural southeastern pennsylvania 50+ years ago.  but it's
> certainly (largely) rural, non-standard, and (largely) U.S.  so
> different people will have different experience of it.

Growing up in the 70s in rural western NY, I certainly don't find it
odd, and when I use it, I don't see anyone blink. I also don't think
it's one of the artifacts in my speech of having a father born in
1911. I do have certain more "quaint" locutions I am conscious of
having gotten (there I go again?) from him, like the pronunciation of
"creek" (although he and I were/are not the only ones locally saying
"crick" there), but this one feels just local to me.

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