View synonyms for so to speak

so to speak

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

Examples have not been reviewed.

My dad was the kind of instructor, so to speak.

From BBC

"Lando's open, he kind of wears his emotions on his sleeve, so to speak," Brown said.

From BBC

"There was a sense of nationalism; people felt we were selling our identity, so to speak, to people who knew nothing about us," she says.

From BBC

There is no fossil record of sentient AI, no ice cores of machine feeling, so to speak.

By expressing these genes in the bacteria E. coli, they pinned down the plant’s recipe, so to speak.

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