got

got

The past and past participle of get is as productive of idiom as the verb as a whole. Some noteworthy uses are informal and verge on the non-standard:

a) Use with to-infinitive, meaning ‘to have an opportunity to’:

This was considered a bonus for me, because I got to sit in the front —F. Kidman, NewZE 1988

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Mark and his mother had moved to Holland when he was just four months old, meaning he never got to meet his dad —Mirror, 2004

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b) Elliptical for have got = possess:

What you got in that jar, Alvie? —M. Eldridge, AusE 1984

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I can't get my head around it, Sharon. Suddenly I got three fathers —Times, 1987

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Right now, we got nine cops in the Miami police department being tried for murder —The Face, AmE 1987

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c) Got to, elliptical for have got to = must:

We just got to live. Isn't that so? —A. Fugard, SAfrE 1980

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‘We got to help these people,’ he says, ‘any way we can.’ —Newsweek, 1990

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d) Use of got to be to mean ‘came round to being’:

It got to be 11 p.m. We left the way we had come —New Yorker, 1989

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