his ambitions in that direction have well been on pause for years
This phrase rolled off my tongue (or fingers, as I was typing), but I stopped to ask myself, and couldn't come up with a good answer, and neither could Google, so here I am asking — what exactly does "has well been" mean? I found a small number of example usages from google for context:
It has well been documented/recognised/established/known ...
(https://ludwig.guru/s/it+has+well+been)
The order of subject, object and verb has well been known
(https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-artslaw/corpus/conference-archives/2007/267paper.pdf)
Poliphilo's language has well been described as Joycean
(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02666286.2015.1023005)
And in light of your answer, does the phrase that rolled off my tongue make sense?