AS IT WERE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does as it were mean? 

• AS IT WERE (adverb)
  The adverb AS IT WERE has 1 sense:

1. as if it were really so

  Familiarity information: AS IT WERE used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AS IT WERE (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

As if it were really so

Synonyms:

as it were; so to speak

Context example:

she lives here, as it were

 Context examples 

This, however, none of them could ever do; for the thorns and bushes laid hold of them, as it were with hands; and there they stuck fast, and died wretchedly.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

We see some from above (as it were) or “face-on” — a good example of this being the whirlpool-shaped galaxy NGC 1232.

(A Galaxy on the Edge, ESO)

The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

We stepped, as it were, right out of the carriage and into the hall, so that I failed to catch the most fleeting glance of the front of the house.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I know,—I can see it—you have, among other ways, been used to managing people with your eyes, letting your moral courage speak out through them, as it were.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Our goal in the next era of gravitational wave astronomy is to capture multiband observations of these frequencies to 'hear the entire song,' as it were, when it comes to black holes.

(Observing 'black hole symphony' using gravitational wave astronomy, National Science Foundation)

My departure was therefore fixed at an early date, but before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred—an omen, as it were, of my future misery.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It was red and hot, and now and again it was a little darkened—as it were, the embers of a bonfire smouldering.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

He went to Millcote this morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance—blot him, as it were, out of existence?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I could observe, in little pieces, as it were; but as to making a net of a number of these pieces, and catching anybody in it, that was, as yet, beyond me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)