"The haves and the have-nots" means the rich and the poor: the people who have money and possessions, and the people who do not. The phrase is grammatically correct, because have works as a noun here.
Have you ever heard this expression and wondered what it really means? Idioms, groups of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the single words, are often confusing, especially to people who are not familiar with them. The haves and have-nots is one of them, and its grammar puzzles many people. Understanding its meaning, origin, and usage helps you use it correctly.
What the haves and have-nots means
At first glance, the phrase may look grammatically incorrect. It is not. It is common and widely used, especially in American English.
The haves and have-nots refers to two kinds of people: the wealthy and the poor. The expression often describes the income gap that separates these two groups in a society, as in "The new tax law widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots."
Where the phrase comes from
No one knows exactly when the phrase was first used, but the idea is old. In Don Quixote, published in the early 1600s, Sancho Panza remarks that, as his grandmother used to say, there are only two families in the world: the haves and the have-nots.
The phrase has often been used in a somewhat derogatory way. When people called someone a have-not, they meant a person who lived in poverty or did not have much money. Those who fell into the have-not group were looked down on by those who had money. Once the people with money and wealth were called the haves, the two words became a popular phrase.
Why haves is correct
You might think that the word haves is grammatically incorrect, since have is normally a verb. In this phrase, though, have is used as a noun: a have is a person with plenty of money and possessions, and a have-not is a person without them. Like other nouns, both take an -s in the plural, which gives you the haves and the have-nots. The hyphen joins have and not into a single noun.
Understanding idioms
To native English speakers, the haves and have-nots is a perfectly natural way of speaking. The same is true of many other idioms. People who are not native speakers, however, often have trouble understanding them. Once you look an idiom up, its meaning and usage usually become clear. For more on how these expressions work, see idioms and metaphors.
New idioms keep appearing and making their way into dictionaries. Every idiom starts in one language, and sometimes it catches on in another. In most cases, though, an idiom only makes sense in the language it comes from, so translating it word for word rarely works.
Idioms often bend the usual rules, so it helps to know the rules first. Here are six important grammar rules you need to know.
From idiom to TV title
The phrase even became the title of a TV drama series, Tyler Perry's The Haves and the Have Nots. It shows how an everyday expression can travel from conversation into popular culture.
The bottom line
The haves and have-nots began as a way to set one group of people apart from another, often with prejudice. Yet it remains a simple description of a lasting fact: in life, there are those who have and those who have not.