had.
simple past and past participle of have
Meaning & usage
simple past and past participle of have
This morning I had an egg for breakfast.
A good time was had by all.
Used to form the past perfect tense, expressing an action that took place prior to a reference point that is itself in the past.
I felt sure that I had seen him before.
When I'd (already) done some exercise, I had a cappuccino.
As past subjunctive: would have.
Had I not known you were coming this evening, I'd have left at midday.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English hadde (preterite), yhad (past participle), from Old English hæfde (first and third person singular preterite), ġehæfd (past participle), from Proto-Germanic *habdaz, past and past participle stem of *habjaną (“to have”), equivalent to have + -ed. Cognate with Dutch had, German hatte, Swedish hade, Icelandic hafði.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.