verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   Contraction of could + have. abbreviation, alt-of, contraction

   "We could've missed the bus, but we just caught it."

Synonyms

All synonyms

couldacoulda

Example

More examples

"I could've met you at the airport."

Etymology

could + -'ve

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.