GETTING GET: The Glossary of a Wild Verb

Get ready for an adventure in the deep, dark jungle of language!

In that jungle lurk some mighty strange creatures. Gerunds and adverbs and nouns, oh, my! But few, if any, are as remarkable as the wild verb ‘get.’ In spoken American English, this tiny, three-letter word is the magic key to another enormous language. ‘Get’ is a colloquial code to express an awesome range of actions, attitudes, emotions, intentions, and implications.

Now come along on a most unusual safari into the jung...