"should've" meaning in English

See should've in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Contraction

IPA: /ˈʃʊdəv/ [UK, US] Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-should've.wav [Southern-England], LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-should've.wav [Southern-England]
Rhymes: -ʊdəv Etymology: From should + -'ve. Etymology templates: {{ety|en|:af|should|-'ve|text=+|tree=1}} From should + -'ve. Head templates: {{en-head|contr}} should've
  1. Contraction of should + have. Tags: abbreviation, alt-of, contraction Alternative form of: should (extra: + have) Synonyms: shoulda Related terms: shouldn't've [negative] Translations (contraction): debió haber (de) (él) (english: (including de typically indicates probability as opposed to duty or necessity)) (note: preterit indicative) (Spanish), debía haber (de) (él) [imperfect, indicative] (Spanish), debería haber (de) (él) [conditional, indicative] (Spanish), debiese/debiera haber (de) (alt: si (él)) [past, subjunctive] (Spanish), (él) habría [conditional, indicative, polite] (Spanish), hubiese (alt: si (él)) [past, polite, subjunctive] (Spanish), hubiera (alt: si (él)) [past, polite, subjunctive] (Spanish)

Alternative forms

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      "code": "es",
      "english": "(including de typically indicates probability as opposed to duty or necessity)",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "lang_code": "es",
      "note": "preterit indicative",
      "roman": "él",
      "sense": "contraction",
      "translation": "(including de typically indicates probability as opposed to duty or necessity)",
      "word": "debió haber (de)"
    },
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      "lang_code": "es",
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        "indicative"
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      "lang_code": "es",
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      "sense": "contraction",
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      "word": "debería haber (de)"
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    },
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      "lang_code": "es",
      "sense": "contraction",
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      "word": "(él) habría"
    },
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      "code": "es",
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      "sense": "contraction",
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        "past",
        "polite",
        "subjunctive"
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      "word": "hubiese"
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      "lang": "Spanish",
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        "past",
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        "subjunctive"
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      "word": "hubiera"
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  "word": "should've"
}

Download raw JSONL data for should've meaning in English (3.7kB)

{
  "called_from": "page/2530",
  "msg": "skipping string in the middle of translations: </table></div></div>\n\n",
  "path": [
    "should've"
  ],
  "section": "English",
  "subsection": "contraction",
  "title": "should've",
  "trace": ""
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-07-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-07-06 using wiktextract (d9fa233 and 9e92f4b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.