Timeline for What is the story behind the phrase 'as it were'? Where did it come from?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Dec 23, 2014 at 15:33 | history | edited | senderle | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
further clarified. but it really does seem like a strong grammatical equivalent to me... I can't get past the sense that Lawler misunderstood something here.
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| Jan 31, 2012 at 22:06 | history | edited | senderle | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 13 characters in body
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| Jan 31, 2012 at 22:05 | comment | added | senderle | @JohnLawler, well, I completely understand you there. I guess I'll change it just to be safe. | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 21:58 | comment | added | John Lawler | It's just that I'm extremely paranoid about the use of the word grammar to refer to semantics, or pragmatics, or spelling, or punctuation, or gods know what else, when what it means -- and "grammar" is in the name of the SE -- is actually something completely different. | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 21:54 | comment | added | senderle | @JohnLawler, I wasn't trying to say "as if" in modern usage is equivalent to "as it were" in modern usage, as exemplified by the quotations from c1400 on. I was trying to say that "as if" in modern usage is roughly equivalent to "as it were" as used in the first quote from 1135, which I've seen rendered "the sun became such as if it were a three-nights’ old moon." But perhaps that rendering is wrong, or perhaps I'm misinterpreting things... | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 21:01 | comment | added | John Lawler | Your last sentence: "A rough grammatical equivalent in modern English might be 'as if,' as in 'he reeled as if hit by a sledgehammer.'" Pragmatically equivalent and semantically equivalent in some ways, but 'grammatically equivalent' is precisely what it's not. That's all. | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 19:02 | comment | added | senderle | @JohnLawler, sorry, I take it that you disagree with something I say above, but I can't quite tell what... could you clarify? | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 18:16 | comment | added | John Lawler | As if. A rough pragmatic equivalent perhaps, in formal English, but their syntax is quite different: as if always heads a tensed clause, while as it were is a clause, and a parenthetical one at that. Only in very informal English does one find parenthetical as if functioning this way. | |
| May 27, 2011 at 22:17 | history | answered | senderle | CC BY-SA 3.0 |