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boughten

 - 2 dictionary results

bought⋅en

[bawt-n]
–adjective Northern and North Midland U.S. Nonstandard.
store-bought.

Origin:
1785–95; bought + -en 3
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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bought·en   (bôt'n)   
v.  A past participle of buy.
adj.  
  1. Commercially made; purchased, as opposed to homemade: boughten bread.

  2. Artificial; false. Used of teeth.

American regional dialects allow freer adjectival use of certain past participles of verbs than does Standard English. Time-honored examples are boughten (chiefly Northern U.S.) and bought (chiefly Southern U.S.) to mean "purchased rather than homemade": a boughten dress, bought bread. The Northern form boughten (as in store boughten) features the participial ending -en, added to bought, the participial form, probably by analogy with more common participial adjectives such as frozen. Another development, analogous to homemade, is evident in bought-made, cited in DARE from a Texas informant.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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