I have no mustache

"Got" is the past tense of "get," which suggests acquiring something. "Go get milk at the store" orders acquiring something that is not possessed; "I got milk at the store" states that something was acquired.

"Have" indicates what is already possessed. "We have milk in the refrigerator."

To get and to have clearly indicate different states. Yet it is common to use the past tense of the first to indicate the present tense of the latter: Case in point from a very successful advertising campaign: "Got milk?"

That's truncating the question "Have you got milk in the fridge?" down to its essence. It's catchy, which is more important in a commercial or on a billboard than worrying about whether the deconstructed meaning conveys the real question.

"Do you have milk?"

"Got" sounds better than "have"; the hard sounds from the g and t stand out better than the softer h and v. There's no arguing with that. But using "got" in its purest sense (which obviously has no place in advertising), "Got milk?" is suggesting "Did you acquire milk in the past?" That clearly is not what the ad intends to make one think. "Do you have milk? And if not, should you not go get some?"

That doesn't look as good on a billboard or t-shirt. I know.

The only conclusion to be drawn from this: You should be glad that you are not like me.

And there's a reason I do not, in fact, have milk at the moment: This ad is not for me.

~

Tune in next time when I blather on about "Where's the beef?" or some expression that fell out of the cultural spotlight long ago, and do so without any hint of nostalgia or apparent justification for ruminating on it.