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“My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”
She was like a Beardsley Salome, he had said. And indeed she had the narrow eyes and the high cheekbone of that creature, and as nearly the sinuosity as is compatible with human symmetry. His wooing had been brief but incisive.
Used to introduce a result: with the result that it is.
1868, Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention Held in 1867 and 1868 in the City of Albany, page 2853:
[...] that the Board of Regents had fallen into disrepute; that intelligent men inquired what the board was; he said that it was a quiet body, and kept out of the newspapers — and so quiet as to lead many to suppose tho board had ceased to exist.
2006, Eric Manasse, The Twenty-First Man, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 7:
It was a talent he had developed; he could actually be so quiet as to be practically invisible. In class, he was rarely called upon to answer any questions. In the crowded hallways, he could slip in and out without offending any of the local bullies ...
2011, Herwig C. H. Hofmann, Gerard C. Rowe, Alexander H. Türk, Administrative Law and Policy of the European Union, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 507:
Under most circumstances, it will be possible to draw a distinction sufficiently clear as to allow an unambiguous allocation to one or other category.
Oft haue I ſeene the haughty Cardinall, More like a Souldier then a man o' th' Church, As ſtout and proud as he were Lord of all […]
1990, Andrew Fetler, “The third count”, in Triquarterly, number Spring:
I feel securely fixed on the careering chair, and with the momentum gained I steer myself as on skis to the guard and come to a stop with a happy little flourish.
1992/1993 Winter, Katherine Weissman, “The Divorce Gang”, in Ploughshares, volume 18, number 4, page 202:
They think they are romantic, tragic figures, exiled as on Elba. They picture themselves as enlightened barons bringing civilization, opportunity, and kindness to the brown-skinned.
2011 January 30, Kyle Wagner, “E-readers lighten a traveler's load But choosing the right unit means weighing features, cost, ease of use”, in Denver Post, page Travel 1:
Newspapers and magazines would load their graphics, and you could doodle as on the Sony Reader Daily Edition.
(law)used before a preposition to clarify that the prepositional phrase restricts the meaning of the sentence; specifically.
The case is dismissed as between Jones and Smith.
(makes explicit that the case is continued between other parties to the litigation)
The case is dismissed as against Smith.
(makes explicit that it is continued against some other defendant)
Functioning as a relative conjunction, and sometimes like a relative pronoun:that, which, who. (See usage notes.)
He had the same problem as she did getting the lock open.
c.1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
Now will he sit under a medlar tree, And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit, As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy:, 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 5, member 1, subsection v:
the temper is to be altered and amended, with such things as fortify and strengthen the heart and brain […]
‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’ ‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
2016, Alan Moore, Jerusalem, Liveright, published 2016, page 99:
“If I had, if I could hold me head up with the better folk, perhaps I'd think again, but I don't reckon as that's very likely now.”
1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain;, London: Iohn Williams, →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI):
The king was not more forward to bestow favours on them as they free to deal affronts to others their superiors.
1660, James Howell, Parly of Beasts, page 48:
Darkness itself is no more opposite to light as their actions were diametricall to their words.
Usage notes
Use of as as a relative conjunction meaning "that" dates to late Middle English and was formerly common in standard English, but is now only standard in constructions like "the same issue as she had" or "the identical issue as the appellant raised before"; otherwise, it is informal,[1] found in the dialects of the Midland, Southern, Midwestern and Western US; and of Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, East Anglia, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Essex, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Surrey, and Cornwall; sometimes in Durham, Westmorland, Yorkshire and Somerset; only rarely in Northumberland and Scotland; and only in certain set phrases in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Devon.[2]
A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire.
She was like a Beardsley Salome, he had said. And indeed she had the narrow eyes and the high cheekbone of that creature, and as nearly the sinuosity as is compatible with human symmetry.
Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus.[…]A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that. Developed as a tool to electronically combine the sharpest bits of multiple digital images, focus stacking is a boon to biologists seeking full focus on a micron scale.
In traditional standard English as (like than) is a conjunction, not a preposition. The use of pronominal case forms (subject vs. object) therefore depends on the syntactical context. Compare:
She loves you just as much as I [do].
She loves you just as much as [she loves] me.
In modern everyday English, this difference may be lost and the use of bare subject forms (I, he, she, we, they) after as may seem pedantic. Only the object forms are used on their own.
You are not as tall as I. (formal/dated short form)
^ Hyllested, A., & Joseph, B. (2022). Albanian. In T. Olander (Ed.), The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective (pp. 223-245). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108758666.013
“as” in Martalar, Umberto Martello, Bellotto, Alfonso (1974) Dizionario della lingua Cimbra dei Sette Communi vicentini, 1st edition, Roana, Italy: Instituto di Cultura Cimbra A. Dal Pozzo
2000, Domingo Frades Gaspar, Vamus a falal: Notas pâ coñocel y platical en nosa fala, Editora regional da Extremadura, Theme I, Chapter 2: Númerus?:
As lenguas, idiomas, dialectus o falas tenin un-as funciós mui claras desde o principiu dos siglu i si hai contabilizaus en o mundu un-as 8.000 lenguas, ca un-a con sua importancia numérica relativa, a nossa fala é un tesoiru mais entre elas.
The tongues, languages or regional variants have some very clear functions since the beginning of the centuries and some 8,000 languages have been accounted for in the world, each with its relative numerical importance, our Fala is another treasure among them.
Pronoun
as
Third person plural feminine accusative pronoun; them
Capitalized for the great octave or any octave below that, or in names of major keys; not capitalized for the small octave or any octave above that, or in names of minor keys.
The definite article o (in all its forms) regularly forms contractions when it follows the prepositions a(“to”), con(“with”), de(“of, from”), and en(“in”). For example, con as ("with the") contracts to coas, and en as ("in the") contracts to nas.
Note: the word is singularly and unreliably attested in poetry,[1] but together with its derivatives usually measures long. It's more likely that it retained the geminate consonant before a vowel than that the vowel itself was lengthened. Most recent dictionaries give it as short, but EDL and certain other etymologists[2] as long; compare far.
as; a Roman coin originally made of bronze and weighing one pound, but later made of copper and reduced to two ounces, one ounce, and eventually half an ounce.
a penny, a copper(any coin of similarly low value)
any circular object; a slice, disk(also of the moon)
Usage notes
It is especially significant as being the coin of least value in the Classical age; as such it was often used in poetry as representative of the idea of worthlessness—one example being in Vivamus atque amemus, where Catullus mentions "valuing opinions of old men at a single as". Two and a half asses equalled a single sesterce.
Declension
The genitive plural is normally assium, but assum is found in Varro.
De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “ās”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN
^ Brent Vine (2016) “"Latin bēs/bessis 'two thirds of an as'"”, in Tavet Tat Satyam: Studies in Honor of Jared S. Klein on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, page 327
Further reading
as in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
as in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
as in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
as in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
as in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
as in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin
Like modern Irish is, this form can be used with the comparative degree of an adjective to form a predicative construction where English would use an attributive construction:
c.800, Würzburg Glosses on the Pauline Epistles, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 499–712, Wb. 10c21
Ba torad sa⟨í⟩thir dúun in chrud so ce du·melmis cech túari et ce du·gnemmis a ndu·gníat ar céli, act ní bad nertad na mbráithre et frescsiu fochricce as móo.
It would be a fruit of labor for us in this way if we consumed every food and if we did what our fellows do, but it would not be a strengthening of the brothers and a hope of a greater reward.
c.775, “Táin Bó Fraích”, in Book of Leinster; republished as Ernst Windisch, editor, Táin bó Fraích, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1974, line 164:
dí laulgaich deec ó mmeltar ól n-aiss ó cech áe
twelve milk-cows, so that drinks of milk are milked from each of them
Mažiulis, Vytautas (1988–1997) “as”, in Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas [Etymological dictionary of Old Prussian] (in Lithuanian), Vilnius
Derksen, Rick (2015) Etymological Dictionary of the Baltic Inherited Lexicon (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 13), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN
Further reading
G. H. F. Nesselmann (1873) “as”, in Thesaurus linguae prussicae. Der preussische Vocabelvorrath (in German), Berlin: Ferd. Dümmlers Verlagsbuchhandlung; Harrwitz & Gossmann, page 9
W. R. Schmalstieg (1971) “New Look at the Old Prussian Pronoun”, in Baltistica VII(2), Vilnius: Vilniau Universitetas
as becomes -las after verb forms ending in -r, -s, or -z, the pronouns nos and vos, and the adverb eis; the ending letter causing the change disappears.
^ Basrim bin Ngah Aching (2008) Kamus Engròq Semay – Engròq Malaysia, Kamus Bahasa Semai – Bahasa Malaysia, Bangi: Institut Alam dan Tamadun Melayu, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
“as”, in Slovníkový portál Jazykovedného ústavu Ľ. Štúra SAV [Dictionary portal of the Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Science] (in Slovak), https://slovnik.juls.savba.sk, 2003–2024
Borrowed from Frenchas. Note that in Ottoman Turkish until its end – though it be that playing cards had been introduced in Turkey by Europeans and French in particular – the card was called بك(bey). Apparently this usage switch is a function of the Law on the Abolishment of Nicknames and Titles from the 26th of November 1934 (Lâkap ve Unvanların Kaldırılması Hakkındaki Kanun).
Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in standard Welsh. All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.
References
R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present), “as”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies
1867, “A YOLA ZONG”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 14, page 90:
Shoo ya aam zim to doone, as w' be doone nowe;
She gave them some to do, as we are doing now;
1867, “CASTEALE CUDDE'S LAMENTATION”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 2, page 102:
As ich waant draugh Bloomere's Knough,
As I went through Bloomer's Knock,
1867, “CASTEALE CUDDE'S LAMENTATION”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, number 2, page 102:
Which maate mee hearth as coale as leed.
Which made my heart as cold as lead.
References
Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 26 & 90