Re: Let me press you ever so much

Marius Hancu <Marius.Hancu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mar 31, 8:22 am, k...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (K. Edgcombe) wrote:

The "let me.... ever so much" translates to "however much I may press you";

What lost me was the perceived imperative/offer "let me ..."

Wouldn't have expected it to mean "even if" or "however much."

Are there similar distant translations/equivalents for the imperative
that you can think of?

It does have something to do with the passive quality of "let," but I
think also the "as" or "though" or "might" part of the sentence has
vanished. "As it might," "as I would, " etc. Perhaps this construction
became so common as for it to go without saying.

I'm not sure if this "even if" meaning was a common enough idiom to turn
up elsewhere... Looking at old books at Google Bks, I only find a couple
where the "let" has this "even if" or "no matter how" meaning. The first
sounds quite like the mathematical supposition use, as in "Let A be a
point on Line X". Yes, this sense of a logical or mathematical
proposition -- "Let this" can mean "suppose this to be true, accept this
as a proposition" and it fits pretty well.:

Wilful and Corrupt Perjury. 1754. Let this woman
creep as slow as she pleases, let her be as slow in
walking as she appears in invention, she could not
eke out the time so as to meet the defendant.

Which is the same as "No matter how slowly she walked..."

Clarissa; by Samuel Richardson
thus muffled up about
my jaws, I should not care to be seen any more than
she, let her love privacy as much as she will.

This one needs a comma after "that":

Posthumous Works of Mrs. Chapone: - 1807
... well knowing that let her hate him as she will, she will
still do her duty by him.

By the way, two clues in the Jane Austen passage to look for deception:
"her only offer" and "not more inviting". In this case, the speaker
sounds generous without actually risking the loss of comfort. There are
a lot of mean-spirited characters in her books, revealed by their
speech.



--
Best -- Donna Richoux



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