so to speak

Idioms  

1. Phrased like this, in a manner of speaking, as in He was, so to speak, the head of the family, although he was only related by marriage to most of the family members. This term originally meant “in the vernacular” or “lower-class language” and was used as an aristocrat's apology for stooping to such use. [Early 1800s] Also see as it were.

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Example Sentences

"And spermine is, so to speak, the binding agent that brings the strands together. There are only weakly attractive electrical forces between the molecules, and these organise them but do not firmly bind them together."

From Science Daily

Hopefully, with our offense we get to a point where we just initiate and we don’t have a point guard so to speak.

From Seattle Times

Muniz’s comeback, so to speak, began in late 2021 when he drove a late model at Kern County Raceway Park in Bakersfield, California.

From Seattle Times

“You don’t want to make it that the inmates are running the asylum, so to speak, but they had some real observations on, in their minds, how we should move forward.”

From Washington Times

He checks all the right boxes, so to speak, unlike that provincial bumpkin from Stratford.

From Washington Post