Why is taking a biscuit a bad thing in the UK? Yesterday the concern published in this city, but devoted to the interest of Minneapolis, bloviated about a granger who was tackled by a confidence gang and unwound of all his ducats With characteristic stupidity the blacklegs are mentioned as having held forth at the Metropolitan hotel in this city
What kind of construct is would that that were all? This is the kinda of would which is the past tense of the non-modal version of will The OED calls this use either obsolete or rare archaic — and it is of course the latter of those that here obtains Dracula’s “would that that were all” is actually an optative that means the same thing as “O that that were all!” or “if only that were all!” In other words, he wishes that it