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Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006Usage of "as it were"
A quotation: "After having seen so many executions on the news, it occurs to me that either many others were being performed (off camera as it were) and this was just the tip of the ice berg or that the presence of the camera completed the last requirement, and acted as a catalyst in this terrible reaction." Could you break up the phrase "as it were" into parts explaining the usage? What is the "it" and why "were"? I do understand the sentence but does "as it were" mean "id est/that is" or something else? ------ - as it were : as if it were so : in a manner of speaking <her triumph, as it were, did not last long> http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com ------ Marius Hancu [responding to this, which he snipped:] <quote> A quotation: "After having seen so many executions on the news, it occurs to me that either many others were being performed (off camera as it were) and this was just the tip of the ice berg or that the presence of the camera completed the last requirement, and acted as a catalyst in this terrible reaction." Could you break up the phrase "as it were" into parts explaining the usage? What is the "it" and why "were"? I do understand the sentence but does "as it were" mean "id est/that is" or something else? </quote> > ------ > - as it were : > > as if it were so : in a manner of speaking <her > triumph, as it were, did not last long> Bravo, Marius (though I wouldn't have snipped the original post). To answer what's left of the original inquiry: "as it were" has become an idiom -- an "idiom" being a usage that cannot be analyzed by examining the meaning of the individual words. To the extent that they have any meaning at all, "it" is a pronoun whose referent is whatever thing or concept is mentioned before it, and "were" is a vestigial subjunctive form implying that things are not as described, which the meaning of the whole idiom confirms. But the word-by-word analysis doesn't go very far, because the phrase is an idiom. Its meaning is as given in the quotation from M-W that Marius posted.  SignatureBob Lieblich Idiom Savant [...] > . . . "were" is a vestigial subjunctive form implying that > things are not as described, which the meaning of the > whole idiom confirms. Not so. The subjunctive here, which is not "vestigial", is the optative subjunctive commonly used in subordinate clauses to represent the act as *conceded*: "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." So "as it were" simply translates to "as it indeed is". It means things *are* as described: "[M]any others were being performed (off camera as it were)" means that they were indeed performed and indeed off-camera. > [...] > [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > camera as it were)" means that they were indeed performed and indeed > off-camera. I think I remember seeing a translation which was equivalent with "in other words." Not in an official dictionary, if I remember correctly. Marius Hancu > A quotation: > [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > I do understand the sentence but does "as it were" mean "id est/that > is" or something else? "As it were" means essentially the same as "as if" or "as though". |
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