Idiom
had better
Meaning
Should; ought to; need to; must.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“You had better leave now to catch the bus.”
“He had better apologize to his sister for breaking her favorite glasses.”
“The sky looks very dark, so we had better head home before it starts raining.”
“I had better check the oven because the cake has been baking for over an hour and I smell something burning.”
“You had better save a copy of your essay on a flash drive in case your computer crashes again tonight.”
“If the company hopes to survive this economic downturn, the board of directors had better implement significant changes to their current business strategy immediately.”
Examples
simple
“You had better leave now to catch the bus.”
“He had better apologize to his sister for breaking her favorite glasses.”
contextual
“The sky looks very dark, so we had better head home before it starts raining.”
“I had better check the oven because the cake has been baking for over an hour and I smell something burning.”
“You had better save a copy of your essay on a flash drive in case your computer crashes again tonight.”
complex
“If the company hopes to survive this economic downturn, the board of directors had better implement significant changes to their current business strategy immediately.”
Origin
From the Old English *betera*, the phrase had settled into its current idiomatic form by the late 10th century. It originated as a reinterpretation of the dative construction *him wære betere*, literally "it would be better for him," which gradually shifted into the nominative *he had better*. The auxiliary use emerged from this syntactic evolution, fixing the expression in the language as a fossilised modal preference.
Key words
Related idioms
Grammar
- Updated