had

had

1. had better.

See better ¹.

2. had have.

This occurs with unreal (or unfulfilled) propositions in the past, constructed either with if (or an equivalent construction) as in the sentence If I had have known, I would have said something or with a verb expressing an unfulfilled intention, such as wish: I wish you'd have kept quiet. Though now associated with dialect and informal usage, the construction can be traced back in print to the 15c, e.g.

• Had not he have be [= been], we shold never have retorned —Malory, 1470–85.

In a discussion of this issue in the journal English Today (1986), Professor Frank Palmer commented that ‘there is a problem with past unreal, because it needs to mark past tense twice, once for time and once for unreality’. Another correspondent pointed out the type had + a- + verb as shown in the first part of a sentence in Galsworthy's Strife (1909): If we'd a-known that before, we'd not a-started out with you so early, which is distinct from the substitution of of for have in American regional use:

• It was four o'clock in the morning then, and if we'd of raised the blinds we'd of seen daylight. —Scott Fitzgerald, 1925.

The upshot is that constructions of this type, of which had have is the most common in BrE, should be avoided in more formal speech.

3. had rather.

The type I had rather is as idiomatic as, though much less common than, I would rather, and in its contracted form I'd rather is indistinguishable. In historical terms it was formed on the analogy of the now archaic type I had liefer meaning ‘I should hold it dearer’:

• I had rather err with Plato than be right with Horace —Shelley, 1819

• I had rather gaze on a new ice age than these familiar things —Jeanette Winterson, 1985.