to've

See also: tove, Tove, and töve

English

Etymology

to +‎ 've

Contraction

to've

  1. to have (with to as infinitive)
    • Herman Melville, Omoo
      "Lord, Paul! you ought to've sent an 'ailstone into that little black 'un."
    • 1857, Samuel H. Hammond, Wild northern scenes, page 166:
      I've met with some queer adventures, as you call them, in these woods too; some that I wouldn't have gone out arter if I'd known what they were to 've been afore I started.
    • 2006, Jane Stevenson, Good women: three novellas, page 25:
      The fireplace is supposed to've been there since about 1900, so in an ideal world, we'd have old-white panelling and a dado.
    • 2010, Arlen Blumhagen, Mount: A Mountain Man's Adventures
      That damned thing had to've been fifteen hundred feet long by five hundred feet wide and over a hundred feet tall.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for to've in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

Anagrams
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