Boughten

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Eric.

Hello, Eric. Where are you calling from?

Dallas, Texas.

All right.

Hey.

What’s going on?

So I actually just listened to your program for the first time a couple weeks ago, and it was fortuitous timing because my wife and I have been having an on-and-off battle about my use of a particular word for many years now and wanted to see if you guys could tell me, am I off the grammatical reservation or is this just an acceptable use of the word?

So you want to know if you’re wrong.

Well, actually, here’s the problem. It’s a word that I picked up because my mother uses it, and my wife thinks it’s a terrible word. It doesn’t make any sense.

So is there any way they could both be right and I can be wrong?

Ooh, let us see. That would be wonderful for you.

So the word is a, I guess, a past participle version of the verb to buy. And the word is boughten. So I guess B-O-U-G-H-T-E-N.

And the way that I would use it or heard it used would be, you know, are you ready for the party? Yes, I’ve boughten all the supplies. Or are you ready for Christmas? Yes, I’ve boughten presents for all the members of my family.

And the first time I used that word in front of my then-girlfriend, now-wife, she kind of gave me a look like there was grass coming out of my ears.

So I wanted to know if you guys have heard this version of the word before, where it came from, who uses it, and how wrong am I to use it.

Is that the only meaning of the word that you have? Boughten just means that you’ve bought it?

Yeah, that you’ve bought it.

I guess you’ve purchased something and you did it in the past, and that’s always how I heard it used.

So, Eric, if I baked a loaf of bread and I said this is homemade, it’s not… I haven’t ever remember it being used as sort of an analogy for purchased.

Okay.

It’s more only used in a verb tense.

Very good.

I asked, and I think that’s what Martha was getting at too. For me, botten, when I’ve heard it, has meant the opposite of homemade.

Right. Store botten.

Yeah, store botten.

Yeah, and you might even say store botten. This is botten. This is homemade.

Yeah.

Interesting.

But it exists. It’s a feature of American English.

Let me ask you some questions about where you’re from, though. They don’t tend to use it that much in Dallas.

Well, I’m not from Dallas.

Okay.

Aha.

I’m from rural southeastern Washington state.

Okay.

I heard a key word in there.

Rural?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And your wife?

She’s from Texas.

Texas.

She’s from Dallas.

Okay.

From Dallas.

So she’s a big city girl, and you’re a rural guy.

Yeah, and we met when we were in school in Boston.

And so this is just one of the lovely eccentricities of mine that she got to see.

Lucky her, huh?

Yeah, my red state patois is probably the least of my transgressions.

Nice, the red state patois.

I like that.

Here’s the thing about Botan.

It’s got a long history in English.

There have been places historically in the U.K. where it’s been used.

There are still small pockets and places in the U.K. where you can still find it as part of people’s day-to-day.

Speech. In the United States, the same thing is true. It has tended to persist. And it’s been relegated mostly to the Ohio River Valley. And it’s not very common in the South. It’s a legitimate dialect feature that probably should be avoided. And day-to-day conversation at home, nobody should ever be calling you on it. It should be totally fine. But if you’re writing a formal document or a book or speaking on the radio, you should try to use bought instead because it’s just going to call a lot of attention to your speech.

Yeah, I’ve seen it described as old-fashioned and quaint, and it was in the 1920s when people really started to see prohibitions against it.

So it’s not a word that you made up yourself, probably.

You probably legitimately inherited from your mother who inherited it from her family, and it’s just a long line of people who continued to use boughten when the rest of the English speaking world said, eh, and started using bought all the time.

Okay, well, that’s good to know.

I think now that I’ve officially been proven wrong, I will continue to use it just to annoy my better half.

I’m trying to be a little more nuanced here.

I wouldn’t say that you’re wrong so much.

I’d say it’s fair to use it in the home and in informal situations.

It’s just that, I mean, if you’re talking about groceries or making dinner or family get-togethers, it’s totally fine.

Yeah, it is one of those linguistic heirlooms, right?

Yeah, well, maybe she’ll let me get away with this one.

She doesn’t serve me dinner if I refuse to use the subjunctive, so I’ve had to cave on that one.

Well, I thank you guys for your insights, and I’m duly chastised.

All right.

Thanks for calling, Eric.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

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