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See the text below:

Let's hear it for Apple's very first touchscreen device, the Newton MessagePad. Anybody have one of these?

Notice the last sentence in the above snippet. Shouldn't it read "Anybody has one of these?" instead? Anybody is singular so using have there seems a tad out of place. Is it a colloquialism? Or just incorrect grammar?

To give you a bit of context, the text is from a MacLife magazine article about the history of Apple devices, recently shared on Facebook.

Andrew Leach
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TheLearner
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1 Answers1

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It's a colloquial, informal way of saying "Does anyone have...?"

Rick
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    Yes. Anybody has one of these? is something I can't imagine a native English speaker saying or writing. – Colin Fine Dec 06 '14 at 11:13
  • But you'd say, "IF anybody has one of these..." – Oldbag Dec 06 '14 at 13:09
  • The Anybody ha(x) ...? form uses the singular; as does "Ha(x) anybody ...?" whereas "Does anybody ha(x) ...?" form uses the regular plural. Other ways are ungrammatical, which needs to stated, I suppose. – Kris Dec 06 '14 at 13:32
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    -1 for not citing a reliable source. It's essentially an opinion. – Kris Dec 06 '14 at 13:33
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    +1 for being correct anyway. If @Rick is a native English speaker, he knows about Conversational Deletion, whether he's familiar with the term or not. And native speaker intuition is a reliable source; certainly better than non-native intuition. – John Lawler Dec 06 '14 at 16:25