| 词组 | boughten |
| 释义 | boughten Boughten is an adjective formed from bought and -en. It apparently has some dialectal use as an actual past participle, but such usage as there may be is poorly attested, since most interest is centered in the adjective. Evans 1962 says that boughten was once widely used in the U.S. but that by the middle of the 19th century it was becoming rustic. It is hard to verify this. Evidence in the Dictionary of American English and OED Supplement is not overwhelming, and it is not clear that the writers cited constitute "wide" use. The 20th-century evidence in the Dictionary of American Regional English is chiefly Northern and North Midland; the DARE map shows dots speckled right across the northern half of the country, with a few sneaking south in California. It is also hard to pinpoint the time when the term began to be considered rustic or uneducated. Critics in our files date from the 1920s—Lincoln Library 1924, Lurie 1927, Krapp 1927, and a couple of notices in the Literary Digest of that era—and we have a few more recent writers—Shaw 1970 and Harper 1985— who beat the same drum. The OED shows literary use at the end of the 18th century—Coleridge 1793—and at the beginning of the 19th—Southey in 1805. The earliest attested American use is dated 1801. American use tends to differ from the British original, as we shall see. The early British uses meant "purchased," as distinguished from what should have been freely given or volunteered. This sense is not dead but turns up from time to time, even in American use: • Better to go down dignified • With boughten friendship at your side—Robert Frost, Complete Poems, 1949 • ... the good will of boughten allies —Garet Garrett, Rise of Empire, 1952 • ... hatred of plastic posh, boughten elegance, empty sophistication —Benjamin DeMott, Saturday Rev., 11 Dec. 1971 The usual American use, however, contrasts boughten with homemade: • More boughten goods, to eat, to wear, to use —Josephine Young Case, At Midnight on the 31st of March, 1938 • ... the ordeal of his first boughten haircut —Time, 12 Sept. 1949 • ... a very passable imitation of boughten ice-cream —H. L. Mencken, Happy Days, 1940 • ... my red sled, and my boughten wagon —The Autobiography of William Allen White, 1946 • ... for this reason homemade and frozen pies often do not come up to the quality of boughten ones — Dennis E. Baron, American Speech, Summer 1981 This use is known in English dialect, as evidence in the English Dialect Dictionary shows, and it is also used in Canada: • "You shouldn't drink so much of that stuff," Jess said. "It's not like boughten liquor" —Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel, 1964 • The "boughten" posts he's had experience with have held up 18 to 20 years —The Citizen (Prince George, B.C.), 12 May 1975 |
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