as it were

Idioms  

1. Seemingly, in a way, as in He was living in a dream world, as it were. A shortening of “as if it were so,” this idiom has been in use since Chaucer's time (he had it in his Nun's Priest's Tale, c. 1386). Also see so to speak.

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Example Sentences

“We are assessing the impact that it’s going to have on our educational program, specific to the holiday, as it were,” acting L.A. schools Supt.

From Los Angeles Times

Wells’s “Outline of History” was an attempt to wrap the whole world, as it were, in a single volume.

From The Wall Street Journal

They aimed to retain the “breathing units” of biblical speech, even if that meant straining German with Hebraic syntax; the criteria, Mendes-Flohr observes, were “not aesthetic but, as it were, respiratory.”

From The Wall Street Journal

She stated that “reader and writer sit down to a game, as it were, with the odds, of course, altogether on the latter’s side.”

From The Wall Street Journal

The proof of Akangbe Ogun's pudding, as it were, is writ large in the monumental sculptures, structures in fantastical formations that attest to his mastery of his art, on view all over the Osun Grove.

From BBC