have


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have (oneself) (something)

To enjoy or indulge in something. I'm going to sit down in the shade and have myself a cold glass of lemonade.
See also: have

have an edge on

To be drunk. Do you remember last night at the bar at all? You really had an edge on.
See also: edge, have, on

have an edge on (someone or something)

To have an advantage over someone or something; to be in a more favorable position than someone or something else. I think I have an edge on her in the race because I've been training so much harder.
See also: edge, have, on

have an/the edge over (someone or something)

To have an advantage over one. I've been preparing for this debate for weeks so that I have the edge over my opponent.
See also: edge, have, over

have the edge on (someone or something)

To have an advantage over one. I've been preparing for this debate for weeks so that I have the edge on my opponent. Now that we have George, I think we definitely have the edge on the other team.
See also: edge, have, on

have

(someone) by the balls Vulgar Slang
To have control over someone; have someone at one's mercy.

have

/have got (someone's) back
To protect or shield someone from harm, loss, or danger.

have

/have got it all over
To be much better than (someone) at a particular endeavor.

have

/have got it in (one)
To have the capacity or disposition to (to do something).

have

/have got it in for
To act in a hostile manner toward or intend to harm (someone), especially because of a grudge.

have

/have got nothing on (someone)
1. To fail to be equal or superior to (someone) in a particular way.
2. To know or be able to prove information regarding (someone).

have

/keep (one's) nose to the grindstone
To work hard and steadily.

have

/keep (one's) fingers crossed
To hope for a successful or advantageous outcome.

have

/keep (one's) wits about (one)
To remain alert or calm, especially in a crisis.

have

/keep an ear to the ground
To be on the watch for new trends or information.

have

/speak with a forked tongue
To speak deceitfully; prevaricate or lie.

have

/take a whack at Informal
To try out; attempt.

have

/take pity on
To show compassion for.

have

/take the bit in one's teeth
To be uncontrollable; cast off restraint.
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References in classic literature ?
It was happy for the poor man that it was my man Friday; for, having been used to such creatures in his country, he had no fear upon him, but went close up to him and shot him; whereas, any other of us would have fired at a farther distance, and have perhaps either missed the wolf or endangered shooting the man.
But it was enough to have terrified a bolder man than I; and, indeed, it alarmed all our company, when, with the noise of Friday's pistol, we heard on both sides the most dismal howling of wolves; and the noise, redoubled by the echo of the mountains, appeared to us as if there had been a prodigious number of them; and perhaps there was not such a few as that we had no cause of apprehension: however, as Friday had killed this wolf, the other that had fastened upon the horse left him immediately, and fled, without doing him any damage, having happily fastened upon his head, where the bosses of the bridle had stuck in his teeth.
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Day by day as his hopes grew stronger and his face brighter, he must have thought me a more and more affectionate friend, for I had the greatest difficulty in restraining my tears of triumph when I saw him so happy.
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Huber's statement that the very first cell is excavated out of a little parallel-sided wall of wax, is not, as far as I have seen, strictly correct; the first commencement having always been a little hood of wax; but I will not here enter on these details.
I was able practically to show this fact, by covering the edges of the hexagonal walls of a single cell, or the extreme margin of the circumferential rim of a growing comb, with an extremely thin layer of melted vermilion wax; and I invariably found that the colour was most delicately diffused by the bees--as delicately as a painter could have done with his brush--by atoms of the coloured wax having been taken from the spot on which it had been placed, and worked into the growing edges of the cells all round.
When bees have a place on which they can stand in their proper positions for working,--for instance, on a slip of wood, placed directly under the middle of a comb growing downwards so that the comb has to be built over one face of the slip--in this case the bees can lay the foundations of one wall of a new hexagon, in its strictly proper place, projecting beyond the other completed cells.
As natural selection acts only by the accumulation of slight modifications of structure or instinct, each profitable to the individual under its conditions of life, it may reasonably be asked, how a long and graduated succession of modified architectural instincts, all tending towards the present perfect plan of construction, could have profited the progenitors of the hive-bee?
The motive power of the process of natural selection having been economy of wax; that individual swarm which wasted least honey in the secretion of wax, having succeeded best, and having transmitted by inheritance its newly acquired economical instinct to new swarms, which in their turn will have had the best chance of succeeding in the struggle for existence.
No doubt many instincts of very difficult explanation could be opposed to the theory of natural selection,--cases, in which we cannot see how an instinct could possibly have originated; cases, in which no intermediate gradations are known to exist; cases of instinct of apparently such trifling importance, that they could hardly have been acted on by natural selection; cases of instincts almost identically the same in animals so remote in the scale of nature, that we cannot account for their similarity by inheritance from a common parent, and must therefore believe that they have been acquired by independent acts of natural selection.
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And he who does not properly manage this business will soon lose what he has acquired, and whilst he does hold it he will have endless difficulties and troubles.
Because the Romans did in these instances what all prudent princes ought to do, who have to regard not only present troubles, but also future ones, for which they must prepare with every energy, because, when foreseen, it is easy to remedy them; but if you wait until they approach, the medicine is no longer in time because the malady has become incurable; for it happens in this, as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure.
(which it is only given to a wise man to see), they can be quickly redressed, but when, through not having been foreseen, they have been permitted to grow in a way that every one can see them, there is no longer a remedy.
I will not blame the course taken by the king, because, wishing to get a foothold in Italy, and having no friends there--seeing rather that every door was shut to him owing to the conduct of Charles--he was forced to accept those friendships which he could get, and he would have succeeded very quickly in his design if in other matters he had not made some mistakes.
Let any one now consider with that little difficulty the king could have maintained his position in Italy had he observed the rules above laid down, and kept all his friends secure and protected; for although they were numerous they were both weak and timid, some afraid of the Church, some of the Venetians, and thus they would always have been forced to stand in with him, and by their means he could easily have made himself secure against those who remained powerful.
And as if it were not enough to have aggrandized the Church, and deprived himself of friends, he, wishing to have the kingdom of Naples, divides it with the King of Spain, and where he was the prime arbiter in Italy he takes an associate, so that the ambitious of that country and the malcontents of his own should have somewhere to shelter; and whereas he could have left in the kingdom his own pensioner as king, he drove him out, to put one there who was able to drive him, Louis, out in turn.
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