He’s put on weight since I last saw him.
He’d put on weight since I last saw him.
Question: Which one is correct? Or both are okay?
Thank you!!!
“He’s put on weight” is correct. It’s the same as “He has put on weight.”
“He’d put on weight” is the same as “He would put on weight,” which usually means “He wants to put on weight”. It also implies he hasn’t or can’t do it for some reason.
Edit: As TraceyG pointed out, “He’d put on weight” is also correct if you read it as “He had put on weight.”
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Actually, He’d is a contraction of either “He would” OR “He had”. So, it too could mean he already has. Pr.obably he’s would be clearer.
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Each sentence uses a different form of the past tense and could be used, depending on the context…
For example: I haven’t seen John for a long time. He’s (=he has) put on weight since I last saw him. Over lunch, John explained that he’d (=he had) put on weight when he changed jobs and stopped walking to work.
He has = John put on the weight and is still heavy.
He had= John put on the weight in the past (completed action). What happened after that is unknown. More information is needed, whether in a subsequent clause or sentence to explain what happened after John had changed jobs and put on weight.
Possible options:
- John joined a gym and initially lost the weight he’d (=he had) previously gained but he regains the weight whenever he stops exercising. (This explains why he is still heavy.)
- John remained overweight for many years but was recently advised to go on a diet by his doctor. He’s lost (he has lost) some weight but still needs to lose a lot more.
- Although John joined a gym and goes there after work, he can’t resist the donuts that are offered for free at his present job. Thus, he’s (he has) never managed to lose the weight he’d (he had) initially gained when switching jobs.
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He had= John put on the weight in the past (completed action). What happened after that is unknown. More information is needed, whether in a subsequent clause or sentence to explain what happened after John had changed jobs and put on weight.
To add to this, ‘had put’ is the past perfect, which is used when talking about an event in the past that happened before the main past event that you’re talking about. So in this case, if you saw him yesterday and are talking about this with someone else, then you can use the past perfect to talk about something that happened before yesterday - in this case, that he had put on weight.
The second sentences implies that you haven’t seen him for quite some time, whereas the first indicates you have probably seen him recently.
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Either is okay but they mean different things. “He’s” means that he has (at this time) put on weight – meaning that the writer is aware of this in the present time. “He’d” refers to something observed in the past, such as “when I saw him last year he had put on weight…” It does not refer to a current observation, usually.
The differences between the two tenses do not refer to how long ago something happened. Rather, the difference is whether the past action is ongoing or repeated vs. completed. For example,
She has worn the dress many times. (repeated action, she may still wear it)
She had worn the dress to the party last year, but spilled red wine on it and never wore it again. (completed action).
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ok, if I changed the verb tense in the 2nd sentence with "past simple, will the meaning change?
The simple past (she wore) and past perfect (she had worn) both refer to to actions that were completed in the past. However, the past perfect is used when talking about an action that was completed before another which is indicated in the simple past tense.
For example,
He had lost weight (past perfect) during the first week of the diet, but regained (simple past) it all when he resumed his old eating habits.
She had worn (past perfect) the dress twice before she spilled (simple past ) wine on it and ruined it.
The boy had visited (past perfect) the museum several times with his family but went there for the first time on Saturday on his own.
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Tracey, you are correct here, but your previous definition - the difference is whether the past action is ongoing or repeated vs. completed - is incomplete. Yes, the action has to be complete for the past perfect, but the main difference, as stated above by me and now you, is that it has to have taken place before another past action, which is (usually) referred to in the simple past.
So, in your example sentence:
She had worn the dress to the party last year, but spilled red wine on it and never wore it again.
Since the spilling of the red wine took place while the dress was being worn (and thus not after it), the never wearing it again is not really an action, and the timeline is perfectly clear, the past perfect is not really necessary/correct here. It is perfectly valid (and more correct as I see it) to simply say:
She wore the dress to the party last year, but spilled red wine on it and never wore it again.
Is past perfect commonly used in the daily life?
It depends on the context. Since the past perfect is used when discussing two or more actions/conditions in the past, it is often used to “set the stage” or provide background information for what is next described. It is very common in newspaper articles when describing ongoing stories. For example, in today’s New York Times the first article I looked at included the following sentence, “On Friday, the president sent a letter to Congress that was an unsubtle rebuff to Democratic leaders with whom he had previously met on Wednesday.”
Another random sentence from a non-fiction book: “Berthe and Simon were bilingual…France was their home; neither had known any other.”
The verb form is also used in fiction but I would guess it is more common in literature that contains rich descriptions than in popular action thrillers and novels with a lot of short dialogue.
Keep in mind that it is possible to make the sequence of past events clear without using the past perfect tense if one includes other words.
For example, compare the following two paragraphs which describe more or less the same thing. #1 is written without the past perfect., #2 uses it.
(1) When I knew John in college, he was on the running team. After he graduated, he put on weight when he got a full-time job with long work hours. He then switched jobs, met a woman who was very active in sports and started running again.
(2) I had known John in college when he was active in sports. Once he graduated and worked full-time, he no longer was training and thus put on weight… However, by the time I saw him again four years later, he had switched jobs, met a woman who was very athletic and had himself taken up running again.
In informal speech, young children do not use the past perfect tense and I suspect that it is not common among teenagers although frankly I haven’t spent a lot of time listening to the latter lately. It is used among adults but it would depend what they are discussing and its complexity.
Another common usage of the past perfect tense (in speech as well as in writing) is in conditional sentences.
If you had helped me, I could have cleaned up faster.
If he had done the practice exercises, he would have done better on the exam.
If it hadn’t rained, we could have gone hiking.
For a learner of English, I would recommend learning what the tense means so you recognize it when you read it or hear it. However, you can probably avoid having to use it unless you’ve read/heard a lot of examples.
jungleboy, context is key. Lilyyang’s original post inquired about the difference between “he’s put on…” and “he’d put on…” My explanation that the first indicates that the action is continuous and the latter means that it was completed in the past is accurate. I didn’t go into the full use of the past perfect tense because I didn’t think it necessary, given the original examples. That you chose to add information about the use of the past perfect generally is fine but it does not mean that my original answer was deficient.
I later posted additional information about the use of the past perfect in response to Chumm’s post which I thought inaccurate.
You seem to take exception to one example in my second post. However, again, context is important.
The sentence, “She had worn the dress twice before she spilled wine on it…” can be uttered in different ways, depending on the context. Indeed, even the use of the past perfect depends on the context.
For example, two women are talking. One says, "I thought Mary was going to wear that gorgeous red dress to the party.
Another woman responds, “She (referring to (Mary) had worn the dress twice…” “Had” in this case not only places the action before she spilled spilling wine on it, but more importantly, emphasizes that the she had worn the dress before that happened. There is a stylistic difference between “she wore the dress…” and “she had worn the dress…” which depends on the context of the phrase and what the speaker (or narrator) wanted to emphasize.
As I note in my later post today in response to a question by Sinbad, it is possible to describe the sequence of past events or conditions without using the past perfect. One could use the simple past tense and other phrasing to indicate when different events/conditions occurred.
BTW, your own explanation did not discuss the use of the past perfect in conditional sentences. I am not faulting you for this omission since it was not relevant in the earlier posts. I have included it in response to Sinbad’s latest question because he was inquiring about the frequency of the past perfect in everyday speech/writing and the use in conditional phrases is a use not yet discussed here.
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Either is correct.
As already noted, it all depends on context.
But to simplify things, I would say that “He has put on weight” is more conversational. For example, if I were casually talking about my cousin to a member of my family, I might say:
Did you see Paul? He’s put on weight since the last time I saw him. He used to be as skinny as a rail.
Whereas “He had put on weight” is more narrative. For example, if I were describing my cousin to you, I might say:
When I saw my cousin Paul during the holidays, I was taken by surprise. At 6’4" he had always towered over me, but he’d put on weight since I last saw him and had a belly the size of a basketball.
note: read 6’4" (six feet, four inches) as “six-foot-four” (or 1.93 meters)
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Both are correct and fine. He’d isn’t the same as ‘he would’, it means ‘he had’, in this context.
Just a question of tense and context.
Many thanks, brucenator, as always!!!
p.s., word order in English allows you to say “since the last time I saw him,” “since I last saw him,” “since I saw him last,” or “since I saw him the last time.” All sound perfectly natural to a native speaker. “Since last I saw him” is also perfectly acceptable, but not “since I saw last him.” (“Since the last time I saw him” is really a shortening of ‘since the last time that I saw him’ but in English we often leave ‘that’ out. “Since last I saw him” is also a shortening of “Since the last time that I saw him.”)
As a side note:
By comparison, in Dutch you can say: sinds de laatste keer dat ik hem zag (since the last time that I him saw) or sinds ik hem laatst zag (since I him last saw). This is because Dutch does not allow you to leave ‘dat’ out and in subordinate clauses the verb always comes at the end. (Also ‘de’ is normally followed by ‘die’: de laatste keer die…, but with ‘sinds’ you use ‘dat’: sinds de laatste keer dat…) Whew!
Oh, my God!!! Are you a mind reader, brucenator? That’s my question as well. I guess I might ask it sometime in the future.
You explained it clearly in advance. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I’m not worthy! (<— that’s what I just learned and don’t know if it is acceptable or proper in this situation.)
haha, have you been watching Wayne’s World?