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Had vs Got - What's the difference?

had | got |

As a verb had

is (have).

As a proper noun got is

god.

had

English

Verb

(head)
  • (have)
  • *1814 , Jane Austen, Mansfield Park :
  • *:About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton.
  • (auxiliary) Used to form the pluperfect tense, expressing a completed action in the past (+ past participle).
  • *2011 , Ben Cooper, The Guardian , 15 April:
  • *:Cooper seems an odd choice, but imagine if they had taken MTV's advice and chosen Robert Pattinson?
  • As past subjunctive: ‘would have’.
  • *1499 , (John Skelton), The Bowge of Courte :
  • *:To holde myne honde, by God, I had grete payne; / For forthwyth there I had him slayne, / But that I drede mordre wolde come oute.
  • *, II.4:
  • *:Julius Cæsar had escaped death, if going to the Senate-house, that day wherein he was murthered by the Conspirators, he had read a memorial which was presented unto him.
  • *1849 , , In Memoriam , 24:
  • *:If all was good and fair we met, / This earth had been the Paradise / It never look’d to human eyes / Since our first Sun arose and set.

    • Related terms

    * be had

    Usage notes

    Had'', like (that), is one of a very few words to be correctly used twice in succession in English, e.g. ''He had had several operations previously.

    Statistics

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    Anagrams

    * (l) * (l) * (l) * (l) English auxiliary verb forms English irregular past participles English irregular simple past forms ----

    got

    English

    Verb

    (head)
  • (get)
    • We got the last bus home.
  • (British, NZ)
    • By that time we'd got very cold.
    I've got two children.
    How many children have you got ?
    • I can't go out tonight, I've got to study for my exams.
  • (Southern US, with to) ; have (to).
    • I got to go study.
  • * 1971 , Carol King and Gerry Goffin, “Smackwater Jack”, Tapestry , Ode Records
    • We got to ride to clean up the streets / For our wives and our daughters!
  • (Southern US, UK, slang) have
    • They got a new car.
    He got a lot of nerve.

    Usage notes

    * (past participle of get) The second sentence literally means "At some time in the past I got (obtained) two children", but in "have got" constructions like this, where "got" is used in the sense of "obtained", the sense of obtaining is lost, becoming merely one of possessing, and the sentence is in effect just a more colloquial way of saying "I have two children". Similarly, the third sentence is just a more colloquial way of saying "How many children do you have?" * (past participle of get) The American and archaic British usage of the verb conjugates as get-got-gotten or as get-got-got depending on the meaning (see for details), whereas the modern British usage of the verb has mostly lost this distinction and conjugates as get-got-got in most cases. * (expressing obligation) "Got" is a filler word here with no obvious grammatical or semantic function. "I have to study for my exams" has the same meaning. It is often stressed in speech: "You've just got to see this."

    Synonyms

    * gotta (informal )

    Statistics

    *

    Anagrams

    * English irregular past participles English irregular simple past forms ----