# haben

**Part of speech:** VERB  
**Frequency rank:** #7 most common German word  
**Language:** German

The second workhorse verb, "to have". It means possession, but its biggest job is grammatical: haben is the auxiliary that forms the Perfekt (spoken past) of most German verbs — ich habe gemacht, gesehen, gesagt.

## Meanings

- **to have (possess)** — Ownership, relationships, and features. Takes an accusative object.
- **to have (as Perfekt auxiliary)** — The default auxiliary for the spoken past of most verbs (all but motion/change verbs, which take sein).
- **to feel / be (in fixed expressions)** — Many states English expresses with "to be" use haben in German.

## Forms

haben, hat, habe, hast, hatte, hätte, hatten, hätten, habt, gehabt

## Nearby words by frequency

- [der](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/der)
- [sein](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/sein)
- [ich](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/ich)
- [sie](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/sie)
- [ein](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/ein)
- [nicht](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/nicht)
- [du](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/du)
- [und](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/und)
- [es](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/es)
- [zu](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/zu)
- [in](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/in)
- [er](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/er)

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Source: [https://mostspoken.com/words/de/haben](https://mostspoken.com/words/de/haben) — MostSpoken German frequency dictionary.