as she is spoke
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.60 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
1
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
phrase
Example Sentences
- "‘To read, not to talk—that is to say, not well. […] That’s how I speak Arabic, as she is spoke, you know—no better.’"
- "Doubtless some examples of Chinese as she is spoke by foreigners who stick to the dictionary and neglect to make the colloquial changes are as amusing to the Chinese as those of some foreigners who try to speak English are to us, for example the German ministerial student in Chicago who quoted a text of Paul, ‘The ghost is willing, but the meat is feeble.’"
- "JEAN: Allez-vous, allez-vous, et c'est attention pour le... bouquet... la. POLAIRE: French, as she is spoke. SCHATZI: Ten lessons for ten cents."
- "[…] many outside poets had French as their international language rather than English, so (not understanding French as she is spoke but only written) I at least was reduced much of the time to trying to catch my own train of thought, rather than listening to other people’s."
- "The other aspect of this process that hurts the old-guard native speakers of English is the loss of culture – their culture – that has been embedded in English. Newcomers to English don’t recognise references to Shakespeare or the Bible so what kind of impoverished English do they speak? […] There are very few such references to be found in English as she is spoke by the upcoming generations."
- "But if this be so, or if courts believe it to be so, the sooner the aid of this higher power is invoked to give law “as she is spoke” by judges on the bench some affinity with reason and “common intelligence,” the better for these courts."
Etymology
From the title English as She Is Spoke popularly given to a 19th-century Portuguese–English phrase book, O novo guia da conversação em portuguez e inglez by Pedro Carolino (1855), notorious for its inaccurate English translations. Though used as the title of the book’s 1883 London edition, the phrase does not appear in Carolino’s text itself.