Having watched a no. of TV crime shows, I hear the sentence frequently: He/she went missing years ago
Went missing sounds so foreign to my ears that I am asking you people if that is the acceptable way of describing when someone disappeared from every day life.
Please straighten me out on that is a perfectly acceptable way of saying that someone is missing.
I suppose the basic verb is “to go missing”, which simply means to become missing i.e. lost, hidden, whereabouts unknown etc. I’m not sure why we say “go missing” instead of “become missing” to describe the action. Just idiomatic I assume. Once you accept the usage the various forms are then simply conjugated according to the verb “to go”:
He went missing; they had gone missing; she will have gone missing etc.
How about “He has been missing for years”? Unless you’re worried people will think you’re talking about someone with poor aim.
I suppose there’s a distinction between the action of becoming missing, for which we use the expression “to go missing”, and the state of actually having gone missing, for which we use the expression “to be missing” e.g.
He *went missing * over 20 years ago = action
He *has been missing * for over 20 years = resulting state
English can be pretty strange at times.
Where are you from? The phrase is perfectly natural in my dialect but perhaps it’s not used in your native community - or maybe it’s just your own idiosyncracy. To me it’s clearly a casual, informal sort of expression, but it sounds perfectly grammatical.
It’s just a matter of describing the state, the transition from gone to missing. This is because normally someone isn’t missing at first, he’s just gone somewhere, or status unknown. It is like going away, in that respect.
Well, lots of other verbs use the “to go” form. I’m going hunting. I went fishing. I had gone jogging. In this case, you’re just going missing. Does that make sense?
The one that sounds wrong to me is “found missing.”
“He checked her office at 3pm and she was found missing.” I understand there’s an implied “to be” in there - she was found to be missing - but even that sounds wrong.
“To be missing” is describing a state of being (or non-being, I suppose). To go missing" is idiomatic, synonymous (as said) with “to become missing,” and more specifically connotes the initial transition from presence to absence.
In other words, “Joe went missing ten years ago. He has been missing for ten years.” See the distinction?
cf. she was found guilty.
I have only run across the “went missing” phrase in settings that involve British or Australian dialects. I have always assumed it was a peculiarity of the phrasing in those dialects, sort of like saying “She’s in hospital” instead of “She’s in the hospital.”
It’s used all the time in Saskatchewan. I’ve never heard the expression “she’s in hospital” before, though. Just pointing out that it’s not entirely a British/Australian thing.
“Went missing” is completely normal here in Southern Ontario.
My coffee cup went missing this morning. I was (sluggishly) frantic for a while, but then I found it back.