had better | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic,with bare infinitive,informal)Should;oughtto;needto;must.Youhad betterfinish that homework on time, if you want to get a good grade.“Will we get it finished?” / “Wehad better.”The projecthad betterget finished by the current deadline.I ought to go and see Mike one of these days. - Well, you'd betterdo it soon, because he’s leaving for Tanzania at the end of the week.

Examples:

EN: "No, Douglas, you had better give up scenario writing and stick to acting."
ES: "No, Douglas, sería mejor que dejara de escribir guiones cinematográficos, y se Contentara con interpretarlos."
EN: You had better wait until next week for Chief Accountant Steckel...
ES: Será mejor que espere hasta la próxima semana, el contable Steckel..."
EN: "If you need drops, you had better come to me!"
ES: "¡Si necesitas gotas, es mejor que vengas a mí!"
EN: There is a time to show mercy to someone. We had better not miss the opportunity.
ES: Pero preferimos... dejar pasar la oportunidad." Maxim Gorki
EN: "We had better go in the back way."
ES: Sería mejor ir por atrás.
EN: – You had better lose no time, my good woman, order him now a deal coffin - an oak one will be too dear for him.
ES: - Madrecita, no pierda tiempo, mándele a hacer un ataúd de pino, pues de roble sería muy caro para él.
EN: We had better stay here until daybreak to see where we are.
ES: "Mejor nos quedamos aquí hasta el amanecer para ver dónde estamos".
EN: Maybe you had better wait for me just a few minutes down on the stage.
ES: Mejor espéreme unos minutos en el escenario.
EN: And we trust that for Captain Drummond's sake, as well as for your own, you have made no foolish statements which might cause him to meddle in affairs in which he cannot-- and had better not-- concern himself.
ES: Y confiamos, por su bien y el del capitán Drummond... que no harán ninguna tontería, para entrometerse en asuntos ajenos, o mejor dicho, que no le conciernen.
EN: - Oh. - I had better change my shirt.
ES: Será mejor que me cambie la camisa.
EN: I think I had better take the first airplane.
ES: Creo que mejor me iré en el primer avión.
EN: But you had better stay with old Chris on the barge.
ES: Pero preferiste quedarte con el viejo Chris en la barcaza.
EN: Nobody had better try to prevent me from locating it.
ES: Pero nadie puede impedir que yo la encuentre.
EN: You had better telephone to Heath. - Right.
ES: Será mejor que llame por teléfono a Heath.
EN: I think you two friends had better talk it over.
ES: Creo que seria mejor que ustedes dos lo conversen.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).