get vs let what difference
what is difference between get and let
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ɡɛt/, /ɡɪt/
- Rhymes: -ɛt
Etymology 1
From Middle English geten, from Old Norse geta, from Proto-Germanic *getaną (compare Old English ġietan, Old High German pigezzan (“to uphold”), Gothic ???????????????????????????? (bigitan, “to find, discover”)), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰed- (“to seize”).
Verb
get (third-person singular simple present gets, present participle getting, simple past got or (archaic) gat, past participle gotten or (England, Australia, New Zealand) got or (Geordie) getten)
- (ditransitive) To obtain; to acquire.
- (transitive) To receive.
- (transitive, in a perfect construction, with present-tense meaning) To have. See usage notes.
- (transitive) To fetch, bring, take.
- Get thee out from this land.
- (copulative) To become, or cause oneself to become.
- November 1, 1833, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk
- His chariot wheels get hot by driving fast.
- November 1, 1833, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk
- (transitive) To cause to become; to bring about.
- (transitive) To cause to do.
- (transitive) To cause to come or go or move.
- (intransitive, with various prepositions, such as into, over, or behind; for specific idiomatic senses see individual entries get into, get over, etc.) To adopt, assume, arrive at, or progress towards (a certain position, location, state).
- (transitive) To cover (a certain distance) while travelling.
- (intransitive) To begin (doing something or to do something).
- (transitive) To take or catch (a scheduled transportation service).
- (transitive) To respond to (a telephone call, a doorbell, etc).
- (intransitive, followed by infinitive) To be able, be permitted, or have the opportunity (to do something desirable or ironically implied to be desirable).
- (transitive, informal) To understand. (compare get it)
- (transitive, informal) To be told; be the recipient of (a question, comparison, opinion, etc.).
- (informal) To be. Used to form the passive of verbs.
- (transitive) To become ill with or catch (a disease).
- (transitive, informal) To catch out, trick successfully.
- (transitive, informal) To perplex, stump.
- (transitive) To find as an answer.
- (transitive, informal) To bring to reckoning; to catch (as a criminal); to effect retribution.
- (transitive) To hear completely; catch.
- (transitive) To getter.
- (now rare) To beget (of a father).
- 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate 2010, page 310:
- Walter had said, dear God, Thomas, it was St fucking Felicity if I’m not mistaken, and her face was to the wall for sure the night I got you.
- 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Fourth Estate 2010, page 310:
- (archaic) To learn; to commit to memory; to memorize; sometimes with out.
- (imperative, informal) Used with a personal pronoun to indicate that someone is being pretentious or grandiose.
- 1966, Dorothy Fields, If My Friends Could See Me Now (song)
- Brother, get her! Draped on a bedspread made from three kinds of fur!
- 2007, Tom Dyckhoff, Let’s move to …, The Guardian:
- Money’s pouring in somewhere, because Churchgate’s got lovely new stone setts, and a cultural quarter (ooh, get her) is promised.
- 1966, Dorothy Fields, If My Friends Could See Me Now (song)
- (intransitive, informal, chiefly imperative) To go, to leave; to scram.
- 1991, Theodore Dreiser, T. D. Nostwich, Newspaper Days, University of Pennsylvania Press →ISBN, page 663
- Get, now — get! — before I call an officer and lay a charge against ye.
- 1952, Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds, Me and Flapjack and the Martians
- I had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t no flashlight and I wasn’t too curious, just then, to find out what would happen if he did more than wave it at me, so I got. I went back about twenty feet or so and watched.
- 2010, Sarah Webb, The Loving Kind, Pan Macmillan →ISBN:
- ‘Go on, get. You look a state. We can’t let Leo see you like that.’
- 2012, Paul Zindel, Ladies at the Alamo, Graymalkin Media (→ISBN):
- Now go on, get! Get! Get! (she chases Joanne out the door with the hammer.)
- 2016, April Daniels, Dreadnought, Diversion Books (→ISBN):
- “ […] and then I’ll switch over to the police band to know when the bacon’s getting ready to stick its nose in. When I tell you to get, you get, understand?” Calamity asks as she retapes the earbud into her ear.
- 1991, Theodore Dreiser, T. D. Nostwich, Newspaper Days, University of Pennsylvania Press →ISBN, page 663
- (euphemistic) To kill.
- They’re coming to get you, Barbara.
- (intransitive, obsolete) To make acquisitions; to gain; to profit.
- (transitive) To measure.
Usage notes
- The meaning “to have” is found only in perfect tenses but has present meaning; hence “I have got” has the same meaning as “I have”. (Sometimes the form had got is used to mean “had”, as in “He said they couldn’t find the place because they’d got the wrong address”.) In speech and in all except formal writing, the word “have” is normally reduced to /v/ and spelled “-‘ve” or dropped entirely (e.g. “I got a God-fearing woman, one I can easily afford”, Slow Train, Bob Dylan), leading to nonstandard usages such as “he gots” = “he has”, “he doesn’t got” = “he doesn’t have”.
- Some dialects (e.g. American English dialects) use both gotten and got as past participles, while others (e.g. dialects of Southern England) use only got. In dialects that use both, got is used for the meanings “to have” and “to have to”, while gotten is used for all other meanings. This allows for a distinction between “I’ve gotten a ticket” (I have received or obtained a ticket) vs. “I’ve got a ticket” (I currently have a ticket).
- “get” is one of the most common verbs in English, and the many meanings may be confusing for language learners. The following table indicates some of the different constructions found, along with the most common meanings of each:
Synonyms
- (obtain): acquire, come by, have
- (receive): receive, be given
- (fetch): bring, fetch, retrieve
- (become): become
- (cause to become): cause to be, cause to become, make
- (cause to do): make
- (arrive): arrive at, reach
- (go, leave): get out go, leave, scram
- (adopt or assume (a position or state)): go, move
- (begin): begin, commence, start
- (catch (a means of public transport)): catch, take
- (respond to (telephone, doorbell)): answer
- (be able to; have the opportunity to do): be able to
- (informal: understand): dig, follow, make sense of, understand
- (informal: be (used to form the passive)): be
- (informal: catch (a disease)): catch, come down with
- (informal: trick): con, deceive, dupe, hoodwink, trick
- (informal: perplex): confuse, perplex, stump
- (find as an answer): obtain
- (bring to reckoning; to catch (as a criminal)): catch, nab, nobble
- (physically assault): assault, beat, beat up
- (informal: hear): catch, hear
- (getter): getter
Antonyms
- (obtain): lose
Derived terms
Related terms
- guess
Translations
Noun
get (plural gets)
- (dated) Offspring.
- 1810, Thomas Hornby Morland, The genealogy of the English race horse (page 71)
- At the time when I am making these observations, one of his colts is the first favourite for the Derby; and it will be recollected, that a filly of his get won the Oaks in 1808.
- 1999, George RR Martin, A Clash of Kings, Bantam 2011, page 755:
- ‘You were a high lord’s get. Don’t tell me Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell never killed a man.’
- 1810, Thomas Hornby Morland, The genealogy of the English race horse (page 71)
- Lineage.
- (sports, tennis) A difficult return or block of a shot.
- (informal) Something gained; an acquisition.
Etymology 2
Variant of git.
Noun
get (plural gets)
- (Britain, regional) A git.
Etymology 3
From Hebrew גֵּט (gēṭ).
Noun
get (plural gets or gittim or gitten)
- (Judaism) A Jewish writ of divorce.
- 2013, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, George D. Chryssides, Dawoud El-Alami, Love, Sex and Marriage (page 143)
- In Israel, rabbinic courts can imprison men until they acquiesce and grant gets to their wives.
- 2013, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, George D. Chryssides, Dawoud El-Alami, Love, Sex and Marriage (page 143)
Alternative forms
- gett
Quotations
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:get.
References
- get at OneLook Dictionary Search
- get in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
Anagrams
- GTE, TGE, teg
Icelandic
Verb
get
- inflection of geta:
- first-person singular present indicative
- singular imperative
Ladino
Etymology
From Hebrew גט.
Noun
get m (Latin spelling)
- divorce
Limburgish
Etymology
From Middle Dutch iewet, iet. The diphthong /ie̯/ developed into /je/ word-initially, as it did in High German, and the onset was then enclitically hardened to ⟨g⟩ (/ʝ/). Cognate with Dutch iets, Central Franconian jet, northern Luxembourgish jett, gett, English aught.
Pronoun
get
- something
Mauritian Creole
Verb
get
- Medial form of gete
Middle English
Alternative forms
- geet, gete, jet, gette, geete, jete, jeete
Etymology
From a northern form of Old French jayet, jaiet, gaiet, from Latin gagātēs, from Ancient Greek Γαγάτης (Gagátēs).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /dʒɛːt/, /dʒɛt/
Noun
get (uncountable)
- jet, hardened coal
- A bead made of jet.
- A jet-black pigment.
Descendants
- English: jet
References
- “ǧē̆t, n.(2).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-24.
Old Norse
Etymology
From geta.
Noun
get n
- (rare) a guess
Declension
Verb
get
- first-person singular present indicative of geta
- second-person singular imperative of geta
References
- get in Geir T. Zoëga (1910) A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Old Swedish
Etymology
From Old Norse geit, from Proto-Germanic *gaits.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ʝeːt/
Noun
gēt f
- goat
Declension
Descendants
- Swedish: get
Romanian
Etymology
From French Gétes, Latin Getae, from Ancient Greek.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /d͡ʒet/
- Rhymes: -et
Noun
get m (plural geți, feminine equivalent getă)
- Get, one of the Getae, Greek name for the Dacian people
Synonyms
- dac
Swedish
Etymology
From Old Swedish gēt, from Old Norse geit, from Proto-Germanic *gaits, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰayd- (“goat”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /jeːt/
Noun
get c
- goat
Declension
Anagrams
- teg
English
Alternative forms
- lett (archaic)
- lettest (2nd person singular simple present and simple past; archaic)
- letteth (3rd person singular simple present; archaic)
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /lɛt/
- Rhymes: -ɛt
- Homophone: Lett
Etymology 1
From Middle English leten, læten, from Old English lǣtan (“to allow, let go, bequeath, leave, rent”), from Proto-West Germanic *lātan, from Proto-Germanic *lētaną (“to leave behind, allow”), from Proto-Indo-European *leh₁d- (“to let, leave behind”).
Verb
let (third-person singular simple present lets, present participle letting, simple past let or (obsolete) leet, past participle let or (archaic) letten)
- (transitive) To allow to, not to prevent (+ infinitive, but usually without to).
- Pharaoh said, I will let you go.
- 1971, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan
- He could not be let die of thirst there alone in the dark.
- (transitive) To leave.
- (transitive) To allow the release of (a fluid).
- (transitive) To allow possession of (a property etc.) in exchange for rent.
- (transitive) To give, grant, or assign, as a work, privilege, or contract; often with out.
- (transitive) Used to introduce an imperative in the first or third person.
- (transitive, obsolete except with know) To cause (+ bare infinitive).
- 1818, John Keats, “To—”:
- Time’s sea hath been five years at its slow ebb, / Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand […].
- 1818, John Keats, “To—”:
Usage notes
- The use of “let” to introduce an imperative may sometimes be confused with its use, as its own imperative, in the sense of “to allow”. For example, the sentence “Let me go to the store.” could either be a second-person imperative of “let” (addressing someone who might prevent the speaker from going to the store) or a first-person singular imperative of “go” (not implying any such preventer).
Synonyms
- (to allow): allow, permit
Derived terms
Translations
Noun
let (plural lets)
- The allowing of possession of a property etc. in exchange for rent.
Etymology 2
From Middle English letten (“to hinder, delay”), from Old English lettan (“to hinder, delay”; literally, “to make late”), from Proto-West Germanic *lattjan, from Proto-Germanic *latjaną. Akin to Old English latian (“to delay”), Dutch letten, Old English læt (“late”). More at late, delay.
Verb
let (third-person singular simple present lets, present participle letting, simple past letted, past participle let)
- (archaic) To hinder, prevent, impede, hamper, cumber; to obstruct (someone or something).
- He who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
- ?, Alfred Tennyson, Lancelot and Elaine
- Mine ancient wound is hardly whole, / And lets me from the saddle.
- (obsolete) To prevent someone from doing something; also to prevent something from happening.
- 1526, William Tyndale, trans. Bible, Acts 8:
- And as they went on their waye, they cam unto a certayne water, and the gelded man sayde: Se here is water, what shall lett me to be baptised?
- 1526, William Tyndale, trans. Bible, Acts 8:
- (obsolete) To tarry or delay.
- No longer wold he lette.
Noun
let (plural lets)
- An obstacle or hindrance.
- 1567 Arthur Golding; Ovid’s Metamorphoses Bk. 3 Lines 60-1
- And Cadmus saw his campanie make tarience in that sort
- He marveld what should be their let, and went to seeke them out.
- 1552, Hugh Latimer, the third sermon preached on the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity
- Consider whether your doings be to the let of your salvation or not.
- 1567 Arthur Golding; Ovid’s Metamorphoses Bk. 3 Lines 60-1
- (tennis) The hindrance caused by the net during serve, only if the ball falls legally.
Derived terms
- without let or hindrance
Translations
References
- The Dictionary of the Scots Language
Anagrams
- ELT, ETL, LTE, TEL, TLE, Tel., elt, tel
Czech
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [ˈlɛt]
- Homophone: led
Etymology 1
From letět.
Noun
let m
- flight (the act of flying)
Declension
Derived terms
- letový
Etymology 2
Noun
let
- genitive plural of léto
Further reading
- let in Příruční slovník jazyka českého, 1935–1957
- let in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého, 1960–1971, 1989
Danish
Etymology 1
From Old Norse léttr, from Proto-Germanic *linhtaz, cognate with Swedish lätt, English light and German leicht.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [ˈlɛd̥]
Adjective
let (plural and definite singular attributive lette)
- light (not heavy)
- easy
- slight
- mild
Inflection
Synonyms
- (easy): nem, enkel
References
- “let,2” in Den Danske Ordbog
Adverb
let
- lightly
- easily
- slightly
- mildly
Etymology 2
Abbreviation of letmælk.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [ˈlɛd̥]
Noun
let c (singular definite letten, plural indefinite let)
- low-fat milk
Inflection
References
- “let,1” in Den Danske Ordbog
Etymology 3
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [ˈlɛd̥]
Verb
let
- imperative of lette
Etymology 4
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [ˈleˀd̥]
Verb
let
- past participle of le
Dutch
Pronunciation
- Rhymes: -ɛt
Verb
let
- first-, second- and third-person singular present indicative of letten
- imperative of letten
Anagrams
- tel
French
Etymology
Borrowed from English let.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /lɛt/
Interjection
let
- (tennis) indicates a let on service
Further reading
- “let” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).
Friulian
Etymology
From Latin lēctus, perfect passive participle of legō.
Verb
let
- past participle of lei– read
Gothic
Romanization
lēt
- Romanization of ????????????
Irish
Alternative forms
- led
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /lʲɛt̪ˠ/
Contraction
let (triggers lenition)
- (Munster) Contraction of le do (“with your sg”).
Related terms
Norwegian Bokmål
Etymology 1
From Old Norse litr (“colour”), related to líta (“to see”)
Noun
let m (definite singular leten, indefinite plural leter, definite plural letene)
- colour
Synonyms
- farge
Derived terms
- hamlet
Etymology 2
Verb
let
- imperative of lete
References
- “let” in The Bokmål Dictionary.
Norwegian Nynorsk
Etymology 1
From Old Norse litr (“colour”), from Proto-Germanic *wlitiz, *wlituz. Related to Old Norse líta (“to see”)
Alternative forms
- (non-standard since 2012) lett
Noun
let m (definite singular leten, indefinite plural leter or letar, definite plural letene or letane)
- colour
- Synonym: farge
Derived terms
- hamlet
Etymology 2
Verb
let
- present tense of la
- present tense of lata and late
- past tense of la
- past tense of lata and late
Etymology 3
Verb
let
- imperative of leta and lete
Further reading
- “let” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.
Anagrams
- elt, etl, lèt, lét, tel
Serbo-Croatian
Etymology
From lètjeti.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /lêːt/
Noun
lȇt m (Cyrillic spelling ле̑т)
- flight
Declension
Related terms
- lètjeti / lèteti
References
- “let” in Hrvatski jezični portal
Slovene
Etymology
See the verb leteti (“to fly”)
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /lɛ́t/
Noun
lȅt m inan
- flight
Inflection
Tok Pisin
Etymology
From English leather.
Noun
let
- leather
- strap (of leather)
- belt
Westrobothnian
Etymology 1
From Old Norse litr, from Proto-Germanic *wlitiz, *wlituz (“appearance, look, aspect”), from Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“to see”).
Noun
let m
- colour
- complexion
Synonyms
- leit n
Etymology 2
Verb
let
- preterite singular of låt