Speaking of Words
By MICHAEL FERBER

            In my last column I wrote about the proliferating meanings of do, a little all-purpose verb without which English would come to a halt.  Do you speak English?  I don’t speak English.  I did speak English once.  You don’t speak English, do you?  Do try to speak English.  And so on and on.  Do has insinuated itself into so many crucial corners of English that we might as well call it “Dospeech.”

            But it occurred to me, as I tracked the hundred uses of it, that do is only the most extreme of a small set of little verbs (go, make, take, put, get, etc.) that have spread throughout our language, to the point where we could almost carry on without any other verbs.   And get is one of the most versatile.

            Its basic sense, going back many centuries, is “obtain” or “acquire,” with a direct object, as in get a job or get a haircut.  It can have an indirect object, as in He got me a job, and that can be reflexive, as in Get yourself a job!  There are many extensions of this primary meaning: She got the answer.  He didn’t get the joke.  I’ve got it down pat.  Shall I get the phone?  Get a life!

            Get can also take an adjective or participle, as in get rich, get sick, or get drunk, where the verb weakens to something like “become.”  With this development something interesting emerges.  English, we usually say, has two voices, active (John ate the dinner) and passive (The sandwich was eaten, with the optional addition of the agent, by John).  Ancient Greek had a third voice, the middle, which is sometimes hard to translate.  An example that works in both languages is this: Mary washes the towels (active).  The towels are washed (by Mary) (passive).  Mary washes (middle).  This last form we might take as short for the reflexive, Mary washes herself, and indeed the Greek middle voice often has a reflexive connotation.

            I think get can be deployed as a kind of English middle voice.  Consider these: Someone killed John.  John was killed (by someone).  John got killed.  This last form seems to shift to something a little more active than John was killed.  It’s not a true reflexive, which would be John killed himself, but we can also say John got himself killed, which tilts the meaning further toward the active voice, somewhere in the middle.  “Someone else may have killed John,” it means, “but John foolishly put himself in danger.”

            Some participles after get carry a more active sense in themselves.  To get married, get elected, get rich, and maybe get laid imply some purposeful action, while get lost, get angry, and get sick suggest more passivity.  Get drunk is somewhere ambiguously in the middle: you might intend to get drunk, or you might mean to have just a glass or two but, well, you can’t help having a couple more.  Get used to it seems also to be near the middle.

            Perhaps the most striking feature of get, though get shares it with a few other little verbs such as do and go, is its ability to make verb phrases with a preposition or adverb.  Get around has two main meanings, “circulate” and “circumvent.”  The rumor got around pretty fast.  He got around the problem.  And then there is I’ll get around to it one of these days. 

            Get on has several senses.  He finally stopped procrastinating and got on with his assignment.  Her mother is getting on in years.  How did he get on to what we were planning?  Note also get into: He got into drugs and then got into trouble.  And get in on: He got in on their secret.

            You can get at something, get to someone, get away with a crime, get over an illness, and get by with a little help from your friends.  You can get it up, get it on, get it together, and just get it.  You can get with the program, get up to speed, and get off lightly.  You can get along with a difficult person and get through another essay on linguistics.  You can get something down on paper if it doesn’t get you down.  There seems to be no end of these phrases.

            Then there’s the perfect participle got, which can emphasize the simple perfect.  So I have some money becomes I’ve got some money.  I have the flu becomes I’ve got the flu.  And I have to go becomes I’ve got to go.  Note that got to, in speech if not in writing, has become gotta, and can be used without have.  I gotta go.  You gotta be kidding!  Gotta has become a new verb, like the new future form gonna.

            In America and Canada, gotten is sometimes used instead of got, as in He has gotten into trouble again.  But for some reason we don’t say I’ve gotten to go or You’ve gotten to be kidding!

            When I looked up the history of get, I was surprised to learn that it is not derived from Old English but borrowed from Old Norse geta, the main sense of which was “obtain.”  There was a kindred word in Old English, but it is poorly attested and seems not to have taken on most of the uses of get.  Perhaps, when the “Danes,” as the English called them, conquered a great part of England, the English picked up get from them, since the Danes wanted to get as much of England as they could get, and the English wanted to get it back.

            I am happy to hear from readers with questions or comments: mferber@unh.edu.  Website: michaelkferber.com.

Michael Ferber moved to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, from which he is now retired. Before that he earned his BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and his doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and served on the staff of the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in Federal Court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law, with the pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three other men. He has published many books and articles on literature, and has a deep interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco.