"As it were"

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Andrew Patterson
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"As it were"

Post by Andrew Patterson » Sat Jan 29, 2005 9:27 pm

"As it were" takes the form of the past subjunctive, but doesn't (at least to me) seem to express ideas "as conceived" rather than "as fact" as would be expected of the past subjunctive. Can anyone explain why?
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woodcutter
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Post by woodcutter » Sun Jan 30, 2005 5:16 am

I would class it an idiom, and thus resistant to taxonomical clawings.
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