Who've
pronounA contraction of 'who have', used chiefly to introduce people who have done or experienced something.
How to spell who've
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce who've
What does who've mean?
- pronounA contraction of 'who have', used chiefly to introduce people who have done or experienced something.
Who've in a sentence
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The customers who've already paid will collect their orders first.
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Employees who've finished the safety course may begin work on the floor.
Where does who've come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a contraction of 'who have', joining two of the oldest words in English. 'Who' descends from the Old English 'hwa', the interrogative pronoun meaning 'what person', part of a family of question words (the 'hw' words that later flipped in spelling to 'wh'). 'Have' comes from Old English 'habban', meaning 'to hold' or 'to possess', the same root that gives us the auxiliary verb used to build the perfect tense ('they have arrived'). The blending of pronoun and auxiliary into a single clipped form, marked by an apostrophe standing in for the dropped 'ha', became common in writing as informal contractions spread from the 1500s onward. The apostrophe is the whole spelling story here: it signals the missing letters, which is why the form is 'who've' and not 'whove'.
How the word is built
- who (relative/interrogative pronoun)
- 've (reduced form of 'have')
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