do verb

do verb

1. general.

Do is one of the most productive and complex verbs in English, although a great deal of its use comes naturally to speakers of English as a first language. Essentially, do has two functions: (1) as an ordinary verb (I am doing my work), and (2) as an auxiliary verb forming tenses and aspects of other verbs (I do like swimming / What do you think?).

2. as an ordinary verb.

Do is used as an ordinary verb, with or without an object, in a vast range of meanings connected with activity of all kinds. The following examples are typical but not comprehensive: I'll see what the children are doing (= carry out, perform) / Shall we do a casserole? (= make) / She did chemistry at university (= studied) / The garden needs doing (= deal with, attend to) / Have you done your teeth? (= clean) / Do as I do (= behave, act) / The school is doing Macbeth this year (= perform) / We did 100 m.p.h. (= reach, achieve). There are also many colloquial uses which are best kept for informal conversation, e.g.: We'll do the art gallery tomorrow (= visit) / They were done for shoplifting (= prosecuted); and idiomatic expressions (It'll do no harm / A hat does nothing for me / This will do us fine etc.).

3. as an auxiliary verb.

In this role, do serves several key functions in relation to other verbs:

a) Forming negative statements (either as do not or as don't) and questions in which the main verb is a plain infinitive without to: They do not want to come / I don't like it much / Do they want to come? / Don't you like it much? / Do they not want to come?

b) Forming stronger or more emphatic positive statements: I do like your garden / If you do come, you can stay with us / We did enjoy ourselves / Do remember the shops are closed tomorrow.

c) Forming constructions in which the subject follows the verb (inversion): Never did he want to try that again / Only after a long wait did he get to see the doctor / So angry did this make him that he had to leave the room.

d) In so-called ‘tag questions’: They don't like dancing, do they? / We met at the party, didn't we?

e) In constructions in which do (or do so) stands for a main verb to avoid having to repeat it (called a substitutive function): My wife likes travelling much more than I do / We said we'd buy one if you did too / We get on well and have done [so] for years / ‘He said I could doss down here.’‘He couldn't have done.’ Note that uses of do following another auxiliary verb, as in the last example, are less common in AmE (which prefers We get on well and have for years).

f) There is also the emphatic construction, not recorded before the 18c, in which do (normally does or did) stands at the head of a subordinate phrase:

She likes the old books, Dickens and Jane Austen, does my old lady —Kingsley Amis, 1988

/

He does have a sense of humour does Mr Marr —Nigel Williams, 1992

. This use is clearly conversational and should not be used in more formal contexts.

4. don't have = haven't got.

Don't have and do you have (with past forms didn't have and did you have) are more usual in AmE than the corresponding BrE haven't got and have you got, (with past forms hadn't got and had you got), as in the following pairs of examples: (AmE) I don't have any money / (BrE) I haven't got any money / (AmE) Do you have the time? (BrE) Have you got the time? / (AmE) I didn't have my passport / (BrE) I hadn't got my passport. Don't have is spreading into other varieties of English but still retains its American flavour:

• We don't have any beer. Just red wine. —New Yorker, AmE 1986

• But you don't have a car —M. Duckworth, NewZE 1986

• We don't have that kind of thing in my house, man —A. Brink, SAfrE 1988

• ‘Don't you have central heating?’ Clare asked —F. King, BrE 1988

• She didn't have a pen or paper on her —News of the World, BrE 2005.

Question: Have you got a room for the night? Answer: Yes, we do. This apparently illogical use of do, replacing have as the auxiliary verb, arises because the question implicitly answered is Do you have a room for the night? It is a common pattern in AmE, and causes less surprise to British speakers now than formerly, since it has also become a feature of BrE. Note, finally, that Fowler's argument (1926) for rejecting do have and don't have in uses referring to particular instances (i.e. ☒ Do you have a newspaper? [at this moment] as opposed to Do you have sugar [habitually]?) was one of his weaker propositions and ignored the force of American usage.

5. contracted forms.

The contracted forms don't (= do not), didn't (= did not), and doesn't (= does not), though not recorded in print before the 17c, are now customary in the representation of speech, and are gradually spreading into less formal business English, although it is best to avoid them in descriptive prose and in any writing intended for recipients not known to the writer.

6. I don't think.

This is so idiomatic that its slight illogicality, once the cause of disapproval, now goes unnoticed. When you say I don't think I've ever met anyone like you, you mean to say I think I've never met anyone like you; but the second alternative, though possible, is far less natural in ordinary conversation.

7. non-standard uses.

There are three non-standard uses of do which should be mentioned:

a) done = did. This is common in regional and uneducated speech in Britain and elsewhere:

I think it done him good —Mark Twain, 1873

/

I never done anybody any harm —Listener, 1969

.

b) don't = doesn't: He don't do much work. This is generally regarded as illiterate.

c) done (= have already) is confined to American dialect:

I don't know what you need with another boy. You done got four —E. T. Wallace, 1945

.