We've

How to spell we've

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce we've

What does we've mean?

1. otherA contraction of 'we have', used to state what a group including the speaker possesses or has done.

We've in a sentence

• We've already paid the deposit on the flat.

• We've been waiting for the refund since March.

Where does we've come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a contraction of the pronoun 'we' and the verb 'have'. The pronoun 'we' descends from the Old English 'we', a native Germanic form with close cousins across the Germanic languages, such as Dutch 'wij' and German 'wir'. The verb 'have' likewise comes from Old English 'habban', meaning to hold or to possess. The fused written form with an apostrophe became common as English settled its conventions for marking the dropped letters in casual speech, and the apostrophe in 've literally stands in for the missing 'ha' of 'have'. Because the result sounds exactly like 'weave', the spelling trap is purely in remembering that this is two words joined, not the verb for making cloth.

How the word is built

• we (first-person plural pronoun)
• 've (contracted form of 'have')

Words that sound like we've

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• weave: To form cloth or other material by interlacing threads, strands, or fibres.