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Used vs Had - What's the difference?

used | had |

As verbs the difference between used and had

is that used is (use) while had is (have).

As an adjective used

is that is or has or have been used.

used

English

Verb

(head)
  • (use)
  • * 1948 , , North from Mexico / The Spanish-Speaking People of The United States , J. B. Lippincott Company, page 75
  • In 1866 Colonel J. F. Meline noted that the rebozo had almost disappeared in Santa Fe and that hoop skirts, on sale in the stores, were being widely used .
    You used me!
  • (intransitive, as an auxiliary verb, now only in past tense) to perform habitually; to be accustomed [to doing something]
  • He used to live here, but moved away last year.

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • That is or has or have been used.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Boundary problems , passage=Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.}}
  • That has or have previously been owned by someone else.
  • Familiar through use; usual; accustomed.
  • * 1965 , (Bob Dylan), (Like a Rolling Stone)
  • Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street and now you're gonna have to get used to it.

    Synonyms

    * (having been used) * (previously owned by someone else) pre-owned, second-hand

    Antonyms

    * (having been used) unused * (previously owned by someone else) new

    Derived terms

    * usedness * well-used

    See also

    * used to

    Statistics

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    Anagrams

    * English heteronyms

    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

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