Question

When will we use “have had” and “had had” in the sentences?

Answer 1

Hint: In English Grammar, there is a difference between tense and aspect. Tenses are past or present whereas aspects are perfect and progressive. Tense is used to convey time. On the other hand, the aspect shows any activity is still going on or completed at a specific time.

Complete answer:
To begin with, firstly, we need to know what a sentence is. It is a group of words that tells any statement or question and furthermore, it is independent in nature as it is complete on its own.
Now, according to the question, let's discuss the use of ‘have had’ and ‘had had’.

Have had:
It deals with the simple present perfect tense. The form of the present perfect tense is Have + past participle. Here, have is an ordinary verb whereas past participle is a form of the verb which is not independent in nature.

The present perfect is used to specify that something has occurred in the past at an unspecified time. Make sure you cannot use present perfect if you are confirmed about a specific time when this event has happened. In addition to this,

‘Have had’ is a present perfect form of having. It is used to convey any event which started occurring in the past and is still happening. For example,I have had a fever since Monday.

Had Had:
It deals with the past perfect tense. The syntax of the past perfect tense is had + past participle.
Therefore, the verb used in the past participle is ‘have’. Had had is the past perfect form of ‘have’. It is used to talk about any action that happened in the past prior to another event occurring in the past.
In other words, it is used to convey something which has two time frames or to talk about when two actions are separated by time. For example- Before the storm came, they had had a coaching class.

Note: It is general advice to go with these types of questions. First of all, everyone should recall the concepts of tenses. Read the basic information of tenses as most of the Grammar works with it. The three types of tenses are past, present and future and further, they are classified into many types.