'twere
Americancontraction
Usage
See contraction.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
She consents to admit Ophelia only after Polonius’ death when she’s advised by Horatio that “’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew/Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.”
From Los Angeles Times
Their purpose, he tells them, is to “hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature” and expose “the very age and body of the time”.
From The Guardian
However the game plays out, what is clear, to paraphrase a famous Englishman, is if it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done amicably — and not too quickly.
From New York Times
To read these ancient episodes is to be returned, as ’twere, to myself; in lost antiquity, I seek my restoration.
From Literature
In the role of Macbeth, Jack Stehlin the actor instructs his assassins that “’twere well it were done quickly.”
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
