"as all aver"

"As all aver" in this case means something like "as everybody says."

Then (as now) aver meant "To assert as fact; to state positively, affirm" ("aver" 4). At the time of the writing of the first edition of the OED, the oldest still-extant sense of aver was a legal one.

This discussion is based on the definition of the word aver in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which requires a little explanation.

To Act I or Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.

To the homepage of this Mikado website.

Suggestions, contributions, criticisms, questions? Email Sharon Cogdill.

(c) Copyright 1998 Sharon Cogdill, dramaturg for this production and author of this website.

College of Fine Arts and Humanities

St. Cloud State University

This URL: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/scogdill/mikado/aver.html.

Last update: 19 May 1998.