Word.ws English Dictionary

to've

/tuː.əv/

to've contraction: to have (with to as infinitive).

Contraction

to've

  1. (contraction) to have (with to as infinitive)
    • Nine o'clock. He ought to've arrived by now.
    • "Lord, Paul! you ought to've sent an 'ailstone into that little black 'un."1847 March 30, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC

Examples of to've in a sentence

  • 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.2006, Jane Stevenson, Good women: three novellas, page 25:
  • That damned thing had to've been fifteen hundred feet long by five hundred feet wide and over a hundred feet tall.2010, Arlen Blumhagen, Mount: A Mountain Man's Adventures:

Origin of to've

to + 've

Questions about to've

What does to've mean?
To've means to have (with to as infinitive).
How do you use to've in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is to've?
To've is a contraction.
How do you pronounce to've?
To've is pronounced /tuː.əv/.

Words near to've in the dictionary

  1. to wit
  2. to write home about
  3. to your health
  4. To'a
  5. to't
  6. to've
  7. to-
  8. to-and-fro
  9. to-and-fros
  10. to-be
  11. to-bread

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: to've (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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Cite this entry: “to've.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/to%27ve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.