Gotten = Have Had?

March 6, 2009 9:25 PM

"Gotten" = "have had?"

As in "I have never gotten a massage before." Sounds weird to me; I would say, "I have never had a massage before," or for the non-split infinitive crowd, "I never have had a massage." Admittedly varies with geography - this is for Mid-Atlantic American.

posted by CaptApollo to writing & language (28 comments total)

I'm confused -- are you asking if people say it, or if it's correct?
posted by danb at 9:28 PM on March 6

Either way sounds perfectly fine to me. Then again, I grew up in Maryland.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:29 PM on March 6

From the OED: "Obtained, acquired, won (chiefly with accompanying adverb). Now rare, exc. in ILL-GOTTEN." First reference is from 1340. It's not "incorrect English", but rather the archaic past participle of get.

Also, not sure I see where there's an infinitive in your example.
posted by sbutler at 9:32 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Does "I want to get a massage" sound strange to you?
posted by trig at 9:34 PM on March 6

“In the UK, the old word ‘gotten’ dropped out of use except in such stock phrases as ‘ill-gotten’ and ‘gotten up,’ but in the US it is frequently used as the past participle of ‘get.’ sometimes the two are interchangeable, However, ‘got’ implies current possession, as in ‘I’ve got just five dollars to buy my dinner with.’ ‘Gotten,’ in contrast, often implies the process of getting hold of something: ‘I’ve gotten five dollars for cleaning out Mrs. Quimby’s shed’ emphasizing the earning of the money rather than its possession. Phrases that involve some sort of process usually involve ‘gotten’: ‘My grades have gotten better since I moved out of the fraternity.’ When you have to leave, you’ve got to go. If you say you’ve ‘gotten to go’ you’re implying someone gave you permission to go.”
posted by ericb at 9:35 PM on March 6 [3 favorites]

The gotten/got distinction in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.
posted by ericb at 9:36 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

To me at least, it always sounds incorrect to use the term 'gotten'..just don't like how it sounds.. that is just me however as there appropriate times to use it (although I don't if I can help it)

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/gotten.html

..from across the pond.
posted by Weaslegirl at 9:41 PM on March 6

*are* appropriate... oh.. already a reference to The Cambridge Encyclopedia.
posted by Weaslegirl at 9:42 PM on March 6

I grew up in NJ/PA area of the Mid-Atlantic U.S., and something like "I have never gotten a massage before" does not sound strange to me.
posted by gudrun at 9:45 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Foreign learners memorize our screwed-up verbs with these patterns:

eat - ate - eaten
etc etc

get - got - gotten is informally incorrect but popular in a complicated way.
posted by troy at 9:47 PM on March 6

I grew up in Baltimore and I've heard both, but I would say "gotten" myself.
posted by dhammond at 9:52 PM on March 6

Wait, you mean other people don't say gotten? Weird.
posted by dhammond at 9:54 PM on March 6

danb - I'm looking for "proper" American English: the sort you would use in a resumé cover letter.

sbutler - Yowtch, you are right. I have ≠ to have!

ericb - Can one 'get hold of' an ephemeral experience like a massage? "Gotten" to me has more of a firm grip, if you will.

dhammond - Yeah, I do say it, but usually as in "I've gotten sick," or "I've gotten out of jail," which is an odd (and perhaps personal/random) distinction, I realize.
posted by CaptApollo at 9:58 PM on March 6

I would say "I've never had" if I've never been on the receiving end of a massage in general.

I would say "I've never gotten" if I've never gone to a spa and ordered one.
posted by katillathehun at 10:00 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I'm with danb - you never really asked a question here. What do you want to know?

At the risk of answering your question and thereby convincing you not to respond and clarify (please do) I can say this: it seems as though your problem isn't so much with "gotten" being equated with "have had." (In your example, by the way, "gotten" is equated with "had," not "have had," since both verbs are preceded by "have.")

No: your problem is with the question of what passive verb the noun "massage" should take. Should I say "get a massage" or "have a massage?" You say you're Atlantic American; I'm a Western American (Colorado) and I should say that I hardly ever hear anyone say "have a massage;" we always say "get a massage." This has nothing to do with "have" meaning "get." I don't remember the last time someone told me "we went back to her house and got sex."
posted by koeselitz at 10:01 PM on March 6

Short version: the weirdness isn't about get and have, it's about massage. And I don't know of any standard, no.
posted by koeselitz at 10:02 PM on March 6 [2 favorites]

I'm with koeselitz - it's not a having/getting question. It has to do with the action you associate with massages.

See also: to take a shower? Have a shower?
posted by barnone at 10:14 PM on March 6

koeselitz - Thank you for bringing the appropriate Friday night vibe to the coversation; gonna get me some later, I hope!

I am not personally from the mid-atlantic; this is for content being served to Washington, DC, which is a decidedly transient and international audience. I am from New England, where we are trained to speak as if we had a hot potato in our mouths. And then I went Vassar - need I say more?

And yeah. Got a massage? Had a massage? Since I'm going for marketing-ese here (I am not the writer, it just jumped out at me), perhaps "I have never enjoyed a massage before?"
posted by CaptApollo at 10:16 PM on March 6

I grew up in Maryland and "I've never gotten a massage" sounds right to me. I'd also say "I've never gotten takeout from that place" and "I haven't gotten to go to the movies in ages." Ah, but looking at ericb's link I see that the last two are standard American English, and that -- as koeselitz says -- the difficulty here is coming from the difference between "having" a massage and "getting" one, which are slighly different even in the present tense.
posted by escabeche at 10:18 PM on March 6

Gotten seems too informal to be the right fit for your purposes.

How about received?
posted by Sys Rq at 10:36 PM on March 6

I also grew up\live in MD and say both. (State looks pretty big from this thread =)
I would only ever write have had though unless I was writing something like katillathehun's spa reference.
posted by zephyr_words at 10:38 PM on March 6

"Proper English" always depends on your audience, but consider this: "and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord." Get/got/gotten may be old, but it can definitely be correct, even formal. Many of these older styles would seem out of place on a cover letter though. I would also advise against conjugating speak/spake/spoken or sing/sang/sungen
posted by rossmik at 11:44 PM on March 6

Well, the gotten/had distinction is all about transitiveness to me. I've never had a pet goose, but I have gotten a massage. Every time I've had beans, I've gotten gas. Etc.

I think in some contexts, like a cover letter, one may prefer received, but I think most cover letters should avoid passive voice constructions anyway. Instead of having gotten training in Z++, you attended the Z++ training institute.
posted by dhartung at 12:23 AM on March 7

dhammond: "Wait, you mean other people don't say gotten? Weird."

Yea, I didn't know that it wasn't universal. But then I've lived in NJ and PA all my life so if it is just a Mid-Atlantic thing, I wouldn't know any better.
posted by octothorpe at 4:46 AM on March 7

From The Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage (which, as always, I strongly recommend as the only usage guide worth relying on; the "concise" version is just as good and probably easier to come by):

The past participle of get is either got or gotten. Strang 1970 [A History of English] says that both forms were in free variation in 17th-century English. In British English got has come to predominate, while in North America gotten predominates in some constructions and got in others. Marckwardt 1958 [A History of English] points out that in North American English have gotten means that something has been obtained, while have got denotes simple possession... Gotten has been under attack in American handbooks as somehow improper. Lindley Murray 1795 apparently started the controversy by calling gotten nearly obsolete. It was indeed passing out of use in British English at that time... Murray's books were widely used in American schools, too, and his opinion was adopted by American usage books like Bache 1869 and Ayres 1881... One version of this notion, even though it is wrong, persists as recently as Einstein 1985 [How to Communicate], who insists on got only. The schoolmastering has perhaps kept got more current than it might have been had natural selection been allowed free play. Thus we find both got and gotten in use...

English speakers in North America seem to use both got and gotten in a way that is almost freely variable... the native speaker will pick whichever form seems more natural at the time.

So go with whichever seems natural to you; you will not be "incorrect."
posted by languagehat at 6:35 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

It's so sad to see good, proper English words being thrown away these days. I'm from the South but live in the Northeast and use gotten all the time.

Also, I disagree with Webster that the issue is strictly a matter of context and habit. Gotten is the correct form for the pluperfect tense of got. I got into an accident yesterday. This is before I had gotten into the other accident.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:30 AM on March 7

It's so sad to see good, proper English words being thrown away these days.

Good and proper English words have been tossed aside throughout the evolution of the language. I mean, how often do you say perchance, aught or even apothecary these days? And yet these were everyday words not long ago.

There is a shop in a town not far me with a sign that says "Provenders of fine victuals and comestibles." The sign is perhaps 80 years old but I doubt many of the people walking by it today have anything but a vague idea what most of those words mean because they have fallen out of common usage. (Luckily, it has big windows and is obviously a grocers.)
posted by DarlingBri at 8:34 AM on March 7

Thanks, everyone, for these delightful answers. I adore a good turn of phrase, and relish in slight linguistic anachronism. I enjoy others' expressions when I say 'drat,' which ought to get much more play. And it doesn't get me fired when my inner monologue screams "motherfucker!" instead.

DarlingBri - While aught is likely doomed (though one Vassar professor suggested I graduated in the class of 'aught aught' - I prefer the naughty aughties), I think we can still save perchance, which has itself eclipsed peradventure.
posted by CaptApollo at 12:04 PM on March 7