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"You asked us to, and loath though we were to invade a lady's privacy, we did so."

Can anybody tell me what though means here and can I write the sentence in another order like that for instance You asked us to, and though we were loath to invade a lady's privacy, we did so.

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  • Welcome to EL&U! What research have you done to find the meaning of though? Which dictionaries have you referenced? Could you explain why their definitions confuse you?
    – miltonaut
    Commented Dec 1, 2018 at 19:45
  • There should be a comma after and. That aside, I'm not sure what the confusion is.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Dec 1, 2018 at 20:06
  • @KannE The sentence makes sense as providing nonrestrictive information with the additional comma. Without it, I'd say the first comma is a comma splice. (Try replacing the first comma with a period, making it two sentences.) An alternative is to replace the first comma with a semicolon or a dash.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Dec 1, 2018 at 20:31
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    I used Cambridge dictionary and learned that it means despite of sth but i also learned from an english dicussion forum that changing the placement of though may have a slight affect on meaning anyway the problem comes when i try to translate it in my head( and unwillingly despite of this to invade a lady's privacy, we did so) it makes no sense to me so i thought maybe it has a different meaning here and that is why i also wanted to change the order to (and despite being unwillingly to invade a lady's privacy we did so)
    – Manar
    Commented Dec 1, 2018 at 21:25
  • I used unwillingly to do sth instead of loath bec loath is kinda new to me and its abit hard to handle using it yet. And here is the link to the forum i talked about above ( forum.wordreference.com/threads/…
    – Manar
    Commented Dec 1, 2018 at 21:36

1 Answer 1

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  • You asked us to, and loath though we were to invade a lady's privacy, we did so.

This is an archaic construction, using a rare word (loath 'reluctant; unwilling'),
and putting it up front before the conjunction though. It's a transform of

  • You asked us to, and though we were loath to invade a lady's privacy, we did so.

So you would do well to write it that way, as you suggest.

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