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Had vs Gotten - What's the difference?

had | gotten |

As a verb had

is (have).

As a noun gotten is

.

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.
  • 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

    *

    gotten

    English

    Verb

    (head)
  • (now mostly, North America, Irish, Northern British)
  • Usage notes
    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 largely lost this distinction and conjugates as get-got-got in most cases.

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (mostly in combination) obtained, acquired
  • Derived terms

    * ill-gotten English irregular past participles