Gotten

How to spell gotten

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce gotten

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gotten mean?

1. verbThe past participle of 'get', meaning obtained, received, or come to be in a state.

Gotten in a sentence

• Prices have gotten much higher since last winter.

• By noon she had gotten a reply from every supplier.

Where does gotten come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Gotten is the older past participle of the verb 'get', which English took from Old Norse 'geta', meaning 'to obtain' or 'to reach', back in the early medieval period when Norse settlers shaped much of northern English. The Old Norse verb itself goes back to a Germanic root that also fed words about grasping or seizing, so the underlying idea was always one of acquiring something. The '-en' ending is the same ancient past-participle marker still visible in 'broken', 'spoken', and 'driven'. Curiously, gotten was once perfectly ordinary in Britain and travelled to North America with early colonists, where it stayed in everyday use; meanwhile British English gradually trimmed it down to plain 'got'. The doubled 't' simply preserves the short vowel sound of 'get', which is the small spelling detail worth remembering.

How the word is built

• get (Germanic root: to obtain)
• -en (past participle suffix)