"Geteth the tax"?

I was driving today, and I saw this billboard:

The tax man cometh. Geteth the health insurance.

Is this spelling correct? I'm not used to -eth, so I am not sure. Should it be "getteth"?

Solution 1:

If we are looking for historical correctness, then this phrase isn't even correct, because "get the health insurance" is an imperative sentence and the imperative form of get was get in Early Modern English. So the accurate sentence would be "get the health insurance".

However, if you want to know whether the form for the 3rd person singular is geteth or getteth, then we run into another problem; spelling was not completely standardized when these suffixes were used, so there is probably record of both used. However, one of the major standards-setters in the English language was the King James version of the Bible, published in 1611. In my corpus of the King James bible, the spelling getteth is used 9 times, and forgetteth is used 4 times. No single-t spelling is used. Further, in the 2nd person singular forms, we see begettest (2x) and forgettest (2x), and no single-t versions.

So, this might be the closest thing to an authoritative answer to how this word should be spelled.

Solution 2:

It is unlikely that the person who wrote this was aware of the existence of an actual word "get(t)eth". I certainly wasn't. The first half of the phrase is a play on "The Iceman Cometh", a play by Eugene O'Neill. I suspect the second is purely intended humourously.

Solution 3:

It seems you're correct. Wiktionary gives getteth as an archaic third-person singular present simple form of get. But Google NGrams show, that geteth did have a bit of usage in early 19-th century. The difference is overwhelming though, so I'd say there was a typo on the billboard you saw.

Solution 4:

Even in archaic English, the imperative of 'Get' is - 'Get', ('Get thee to a nunnery', Hamlet). 'Getteth' (or occasionally 'geteth': see Philoto's answer) would be third person singular. Sadly, copywriters for billboards rarely check a 16th century dictionary (or even this site), before approving an amusing, eye-catching line.

Solution 5:

As well as the spelling, it seems a very strange construction. Obviously it is meant to be comically archaic language, but I think it would read better as

The tax man cometh. Getteth thou the tax.