English · Idiom Historical

What we Gave we Have

Preserved but no longer current.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

The epitaph on "the Good Earl of Courtenay" (see Gibbons Decline and Fall, vol. vi, Ch. 61) :— What wee gave, wee have; What wee spent, wee had; What wee left, wee lost.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

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Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)

Sources & notes

Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.

Topics: Historical slang (1800s)

Common questions

What does “What we Gave we Have” mean?

The epitaph on "the Good Earl of Courtenay" (see Gibbons Decline and Fall, vol. vi, Ch. 61) :— What wee gave, wee have; What wee spent, wee had; What wee left, wee lost.

Is “What we Gave we Have” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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