Timeline for When "he's gone" means "he's dead", is it a contraction of "he is" or "he has"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
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| Aug 10, 2019 at 3:01 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglishLL/status/1160023398946353152 | ||
| Aug 10, 2019 at 1:00 | comment | added | Théophile | Putting this into the plural, which sounds more natural, "They've gone" or "They're gone"? I'd definitely say the second. A search on Google Books for, say, "parents are both gone" yields many hits alluding to death, while "parents have both gone" is typically followed by where they've gone (to work, to the store, ...). This could mean death, but then it's made explicit: "parents have both gone on to be with the Lord", for example. | |
| Aug 10, 2019 at 0:13 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Aug 10, 2019 at 0:08 | vote | accept | trisct | ||
| Aug 9, 2019 at 23:28 | comment | added | Jasper | Related question: "This's gotta be the worst job in the world." | |
| Aug 9, 2019 at 22:35 | comment | added | cjl750 | I agree with Michael Harvey, and I'm a not-old-fashioned American. To the extent that I'd never say "he is gone," it's only because I'd use the contraction instead, but I'm certainly 1000 times more likely to say "is gone" than "has gone." | |
| Aug 9, 2019 at 18:25 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | This still moves me every time I read it, more so if I do it aloud: Remember me when I am gone away,/Gone far away into the silent land;/When you can no more hold me by the hand/Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. (Christina Rossetti - Remember). | |
| Aug 9, 2019 at 17:23 | answer | added | David Siegel | timeline score: 7 | |
| Aug 9, 2019 at 17:05 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | trisct - A corpse is a dead person. Someone saying "he's gone" about an adjacent, recumbent, unconscious person, is saying it about a corpse. Fumblefingers - I might say "He is gone" about a newly dead person. I am British, kind of old-fashioned, and bookish, yes, but still, it means your "no-one would normally say" is not right. | |
| Aug 9, 2019 at 16:29 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Here's a clear-cut instance from a competent writer (1935?) using I am sorry he has gone to mean is dead / has died. I think it's generally fairly meaningless to ask which of those latter two alternatives most accurately corresponds to the actual gone usage, since the meaning is the same regardless. But no-one would normally say He is gone instead of ...is dead. | |
| Aug 9, 2019 at 16:15 | comment | added | trisct | It's just that, I've never heard anyone use "he has gone" by a corpse. And I imagine it would be weird to do so. | |
| Aug 9, 2019 at 16:13 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | Nothing "ambiguous" about a corpse. Common sense provides the meaning. Either is gone, or has gone. Both are correct. | |
| Aug 9, 2019 at 16:09 | history | asked | trisct | CC BY-SA 4.0 |