Word.ws English Dictionary

have a say

have a say verb: to (receive the opportunity to) voice one's opinion.

Verb

have a say (third-person singular simple present has a say, present participle having a say, simple past and past participle had a say)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To (receive the opportunity to) voice one's opinion.
    • He didn't have a say in deciding where he and his family would go on vacation.
    • Lenin's premisses require us to believe that the interests and aims of a social class, the proletariat, can and indeed must be determined without that class having a say in the matter.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in...

Forms of have a say

third-person singular presenthas a say
present participlehaving a say
past participlehad a say
pasthad a say
alternative formhave one's say

Questions about have a say

What does have a say mean?
Have a say means to (receive the opportunity to) voice one's opinion.
What part of speech is have a say?
Have a say is a verb.
What is the past tense of have a say?
The past tense of have a say is had a say.

Words near have a say in the dictionary

  1. have a pop at
  2. have a quiet word
  3. have a rough time of it
  4. have a run for it
  5. have a safe trip home
  6. have a say
  7. have a screw loose
  8. have a seat
  9. have a shit
  10. have a short memory
  11. have a sixpenny bit up one's backside

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: have a say (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-have a say.ogg.

Cite this entry: “have a say.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/have_a_say. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.