"will have" = "undoubtedly did"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yes, but OED traces that only to 1909. The similar but hardly identical "would be" is lumped with it under 32.b and pegged at 1857:

  "'One..was quite the pet nursling of the school.’ This last would be Emily".

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Subject: Re: "will have" = "undoubtedly did"
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My memory is somewhat uncertain, but wasn't it once upon a time the
fashion for academics writing historically to write: "... Lampito ...
_would have_ worn 'Doric' garments ...," in cases like this?

-Wilson

On 9/15/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: "will have" = "undoubtedly did"
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>
> OK, when did the Brits start doing this ? Ex.:
>
> 2002 Alan H. Sommerstein _Lysistrata and Other Plays_ (N.Y.: Penguin, 2002) xxxv:
> In _Lysisitrata_, Lampito and her Pelopponesian companions will have worn 'Doric' garments, which were considerably more revealing.
>
> It seems to be a development of OED 32.b mingled with 15.d and strikes me as being quite recent - as well as being very frequent.
>
> JL
>
>
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--
-Wilson
----
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

--Sam Clemens

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