Are these real words: Normalcy and gotten?

Question

In English, not American. They seem to be creeping into use in the U.K. I remember when my niece was doing SATs in USA that the word normalcy came up and was deemed to be incorrect in the mid 90s but who knows now. Gotten as in past tense of got.

Answer 1

I've never een heard of normalcy. Neither word are actual words, but people use them. It's just like any word. If enough people use the words then they are deemed as real words and added to the dictionary. Like minging, one of the definitions of this word is now something/someone which is ugly.

Answer 2

Normalcy is  Synonym of normailty .   Although sometimes used, normalcy is less common than normality in American English. It is very rarely used in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It is frequent in India.

Gottenn is the past participle of GET.  The form gotten is not used in British English but is very common in North American English, though even there it is often regarded as non-standard.

For being frequently used these words are supposed to be real.

Answer 3

Gotten is not acceptable in British English. Normalcy has it's uses within certain limits that define the range of normal functioning : -)

Answer 4

Yes.

Answer 5

Normalcy is a noun defined as "the state or fact of being normal" and dates back to 1857. (The children found the normalcy of home comforting after returning from 4 weeks at summer camp.)

Gotten is the past participle of get, (He hasn't gotten far with his essay.) Or ill-gotten: acquired by illicit or improper means.

Both are completely acceptable words to use...they are not slang/bad English; they are aparently just more common in America than Great Britain or other countries.

Hope this helps...

Answer 6

Normalcy is a horrible Americanism, but you can easily work out that the speaker means normality, so there is no confusion in semantic terms.

Gotten is actually Elizabethan English, which is still used in Northern Ireland and America, while in British English it is archaic. The term is still preserved in "forgotten", though, but not on its own.

Answer 7

I think gotten might be, but I remember my English teacher at school used to even frown upon people using 'got' in their work.

Normalcy just sounds wrong, I'd rather use 'normal' or 'normality'.

Answer 8

I had thought that Warren G. Harding made up the word "normalcy" when he was running for president.  But according to this article: http://www.answers.com/topic/normalcy (copied below), it existed well before that.  (Sorry, I'm an American; I don't know whether this is considered a "word" in British English.)

Word Origin: normalcy

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Origin: 1920

It won the presidential election for Warren G. Harding in 1920: normalcy, a word that he rescued from obscurity. After the disruption of the World War, Harding said on the campaign trail, it was time to get back to normal: "America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration." He repeated the word in his inaugural address the next year: "Our supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way.... We must strive to normalcy to reach stability."

Normalcy was popular with the voters. But since it was a newly prominent word uttered by a politician, reactions to normalcy were mixed. Language purists sneered that Harding's word was a mistake for normality. They explained that -ity is the usual suffix for words like normal, while -cy is only attached to words that end in t, as in democracy from democrat. However, there were language purists among Harding's supporters too, and they found normalcy lurking in dictionaries and articles as far back as 1857, attracting no criticism (or attention of any sort) before Harding used it.

The normalcy debate of the 1920s is now long gone, and normalcy is now more normal than normality to describe the way things usually are or the way we think they ought to be.

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And now on to "gotten": as an American, I do use the word "gotten"; it's a real and grammatically correct word here.  But apparently it is not grammatically correct in British English.

American do also use "got", though.  The two expressions, "I have got" and "I have gotten" do not mean the same thing to us.  "I have got" just means "I own," "I have in my possession," etc., while "I have gotten" means "I have obtained," "I have acquired," "I have become," etc.

Here are two sites that do a much better job of explaining the distinction:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/a...

http://www.grammarphobia.com/grammar.htm... (scroll down to the last "tombstone")

Edit: Just out of curiosity, is the expression "ill-gotten gains" used in British English?  It's a common expression in America.

Answer 9

The word “Normalcy” had been around for more than half a century when President Warren G. Harding was assailed in the newspapers for having used it in a 1921 speech. Some folks are still upset; but in the US “normalcy” is a perfectly normal.

It is synonym for “normality”.

"Gotten" is always the present perfect tense.

"I have gotten ...," when you mean you have acquired something or obtained something whereas you say, "I've got ...," when you mean you have something.

Answer 10

No

Normality

and

I 'got', 'received' 'became'-depending on context

Normalcy and gotten are merely slang/bad English

Answer 11

NO!!!!!!

Gotten is actually correct old (olde) English but is is now deemed as unacceptable and gramatically incorrect. Normalcy? necer heard the word- does it replace normality?