Course there is the expanded update on the 'hadders":
"What do you mean! I've been more than (just) had."
or
"He's (she's) been more than just had!"
Something has happened even more out of proportion. i.e. - or is it e.g.? -
to what one might expect. Not only did they take away his job, but they took his house.
Christopher Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
And "I've been had"? [MW]
OED has for HAVE v sense 15c:
c. To get the better of, outwit, take in, deceive, 'do'. slang. [RH]
It's part of a subset of POSSESSION conceived of as ADVANTAGE. Thus it can
have (Othello I.ii; this is a wrestling expression also used in The
Merchant) a physical sense of power: 'I'll have our Michael Cassio on the
hip.' Nowadays one would have someone 'on the back foot'. Or a more general
sense: 'You have the advantage of Me', 'You have me there' and so forth. Or
a specifically sexual sense: 'Was ever woman in this humour won? / I'll have
her; but I will not keep her long' (Rich III, 1.ii) where there's a parallel
lexis of deprival: losing virginity, 'spending' and suchlike.
Incidentally, the phrase 'have it off' can operate in two senses: either as
distraint ('I'll have it off before I've done with you...': the 'it' here is
rent money; Warren: *A Thousand a Year*, 1851) or as robbery (< 1931), or as
hochmagandy (< 1930s; at least according to Partridge).
Anyway here are two OED citations, both under 15a. They are very similar
save that one turns on both wrestling with a sexual innuendo and the other
(tricks ain't walking no more?) comes from cards:
'Why, she's neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her.'
(Falstaff in Henry IV Part I)
'One had better sometimes play with a good gamester than a bungler, for one
knowes not where to have him' (*Shuffling, Cutting and Dealing*, 1659)
I've bought the farm [MW]
This is an extension of that principle, I suspect: SPENDING (money, energy,
blood, life etc) conceived of as a LOSS. So, as Judy went on to suggest, the
'farm' is decorative rather than intrinsic. In losing his life, 'he bought
it' > 'he bought the plot' > 'he bought the farm'. (In the UK 'gone for a
Burton' has a similar folk explanation, from either suits or beer, depending
on who is telling it; but the operative word is 'gone'. 'Gone West' is
another such.)
I've had it (je l'ai tenue?), in both its meanings [MW]
This is more complex, I think, but again it turns on possession. In the
sense of irritation, the pluperfect signals possession overfulfilled: 'I
just can't take any more', 'I've had it (up to here)', 'I'm fed up (to the
back teeth)' and so forth. But of course to 'have had it' in a more darkly
pluperfect sense refers to that threshold moment, just before the point of
death, by which time all available *possession* has already passed through
one's hands and all life is (effectively) 'spent'.
CW
_______________________________________________
'How to speak a different language and still be understood?
This is *communication* but we might call it politics, or we
might call it life.' (Judith Revel)
