Got

How to spell got

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce got

What does got mean?

1. verbPast tense of 'get': obtained, received, or came to have something.

Got in a sentence

• She got a new laptop for her birthday last week.

• We got home late after the traffic on the motorway.

Where does got come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Got is the past tense of 'get', a verb that English borrowed from Old Norse around the twelfth or thirteenth century, from the Old Norse 'geta', meaning 'to obtain' or 'to reach'. The Norse word shared an ancient Germanic root that also lies behind the old English 'gietan', preserved today only in compounds such as 'forget' and 'beget'. Because 'get' is a strong verb, its past tense is formed by changing the vowel rather than by adding an ending, which is why we say 'got' rather than anything regular. In older and more formal English the past participle was 'gotten', a form that survives strongly in American usage while British English usually prefers 'got'. The spelling is short and phonetic, which is why this word almost never trips up adult writers.

How the word is built

• got (past tense and past participle of the verb 'get'), a strong verb form altering the vowel of get rather than adding a suffix