Mea Culpa: rewilding the English language

Questions of language and style in last week’s Independent, reviewed by John Rentoul

‘Glass Onion’ is both a film starring Daniel Craig (above) and a Beatles song. Which is handy for this week’s column... (Netflix)

We used the word “gotten” three times last week, and we are not sorry. I like it, a good 17th-century English past participle exported to the New World and now re-imported; part of a deeply conservative trend, a bit like rewilding Scotland with wolves.

In an article about rising sea levels, we said: “Venice’s margins for survival have gotten narrower.” A couple of readers protested, but I am afraid that their fists beat against the juggernaut of linguistic reaction in vain.

We also said, in a “world news in brief” item, that a pop star and his co-accused had “allegedly assaulted two women they had gotten drunk”. In the Venice case, we could have substituted “become”, but in this one “had got drunk” would have been awkward and rewriting would have been worse.