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I work as a tutor for an online English school and one student asked me this:

"In this sentence: I have the hiccups

Could it be: I Have hiccups?"

I have done a lot of research on advanced article usage but I haven't found anything even close to that. I have no idea what to say.

Any help will be appreciated. Especially if you can suggest articles about this subject.

Thanks in advance.

Edit:

It is not a duplicate to a cold vs flu / the flu discussion because talking about having "hiccups" is not the same as talking about having "flu".

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Leandro
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  • For your specific "condition", usage has been pretty much evenly split this past half-century. It's entirely your choice. – FumbleFingers Apr 07 '17 at 00:43
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    A couple other options: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=got+the+hiccups%2Cgot+hiccups%2Chave+the+hiccups%2Chave+hiccups&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cgot%20the%20hiccups%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cgot%20hiccups%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chave%20the%20hiccups%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chave%20hiccups%3B%2Cc0 – htoip Apr 07 '17 at 00:50
  • The "the" is optional. – Hot Licks Apr 07 '17 at 01:27
  • "I have the hiccups" is a description of what's happening at the moment. To speak generally: "When I have hiccups, I sip water from the opposite side of the glass, and that usually works." – aparente001 Apr 07 '17 at 01:57

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