Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

In this case it may mean 'even though' or 'inspite of', etc.

Right.  It's a concessive fixed phrase, which translates
more or less like "Whether that is true or not", and is
always a subordinate clause.  Now it just means
"even if that's true, it's irrelevant (or anyway I'm
going to ignore it)"

Its origins are very old; it's one of those frozen
subjunctives (subjuncticicles?) that litter the
landscape in English, like "if I were you" or
"would that".  The "be" is the infinitive (bare)
form of the verb, which shows up in what used
to be the Present-stem (or Hypothetical)
Subjunctive, as in "It's important that you
be here on time tomorrow."

And it's sitting at the beginning of the clause
because one didn't need an "if" on a
hypothetical clause if it began with a fronted
subjunctive -- the verb form served to mark
the clause.  Now we don't have a distinctive
subjunctive form in English any more (unlike
German, where subjunctive verb fronting
is very common), so that's not the rule now.

With all the trimmings restored, it probably
originally came from something like
 "[Let] that be [considered true],
  as it may [in fact] be [true]"
before syntax got to work in the abbatoir.

Of course we don't have that kind of syntax
around any more either, so we don't always
recognize the products, especially when
they're all shriveled up after a few hundred
years.

-John Lawler  http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue
 "Our language can be seen as an ancient city:
  a maze of little streets and squares, of old and
  new houses, and of houses with additions from
  various periods; and this surrounded by a
  multitude of new boroughs."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen

Or change the subject altogether.

It's a really useful phrase in, say, a committee meeting where tangental
dispute has gotten people off target. You say "Be that as it may, ..."
and return to the real subject. It leaves the arguing parties feeling
respected enough (it didn't insult anyone) to cooperate.

A similar, even more quelling phrase, if you need to haul out the big
guns, is "Howsoever it may be..." Lean on the first word, and that plus
the grammar are just strange enough to stun the others.