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lief

I confirm that as far as I'm aware, it's archaic. But I've always liked the word and will do what I can to bring it back into common usage.
I confirm that as far as I'm aware, it's archaic. But I've always liked the word and will do what I can to bring it back into common usage.
I like the word, I have used it (no, really) and have come across it but then I read a lot of historical fantasy...
I am with Brain, I've never heard of it, and I'm loading the dictionary now and it's taking an unusually long time, maybe the dictionary is trying to locate / remember the meaning as well.

You have actually used this word Victoria? in what sentence!👁 Stick Out Tongue :p
lol.
I am with Brain, I've never heard of it, and I'm loading the dictionary now and it's taking an unusually long time, maybe the dictionary is trying to locate / remember the meaning as well.

You have actually used this word Victoria? in what sentence!👁 Stick Out Tongue :p
lol.
Things like "I'd as lief kick his *ss for him, as look at him."
That kind of thing...👁 Big Grin :D
I've heard it quite a lot in literature usually in a consciously olde worlde" way, meaning readily or willingly, but only ever in the construction, "I would as lief..."
I've heard it quite a lot in literature usually in a consciously olde worlde" way, meaning readily or willingly, but only ever in the construction, "I would as lief..."
I myself have mostly come across the constructions such as "one was lief to do something" or "as lief as not". But I have only met it in foreign dictionaries which translated things into English from some other language, never in English speech or writing as such.
I seem to recall reading this in something of Mark Twain's - I took it to be yet another word transported long ago and still surviving in the southern states.

I've never used it.
It's rather like saying "I would as fain..." (gladly).

Jane Austen: "But perhaps you young ladies may not care about the beaux, and had as lief be without them as with them."

Robert Louis Stevenson "I would as lief they didnae see me."

Shakespeare: "I cannot tell; but I had as lief take her dowry with this
condition: to be whipp'd at the high cross every morning."

Harriet Becher Stowe: ""Never mind, mamma; you'd as lief as not Topsy should do it,--had you not?"

Walter Scott: "I would as lief touch a toad; I will disappoint him, and take old Horsington the groom for my master of the horse.''

Etc etc etc...
WHY DO I ALWAYS SPELL BRIAN, ugh, you know what? this is annoying me, when I just typed "Brian" the last time, I spelt it "brain" AGAIN. I always type "Brain" first and then have to change it, I can't help it anymore~!
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