English

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.