[Corpora-List] Studies of "as it were" , "so to speak"and "in a manner of speaking"

[Mike Maxwell]

Bill Louw wrote:
> ...In a pre-corpus world one might say that the
> author is appealing to a classroom understanding of how subjunctives
> are used to express uncertainty and how odd this sounds if it is
> contrasted, then and there, with its indicative counterpart. 
>> 
>> "Three, as it were, Woozles, and one, as it was, Wizzle."

Maybe this is what you're saying, but: doesn't the humor lie in 
pretending that the singular subjunctive of "to be" is "was"?
-- 
    Mike Maxwell
    What good is a universe without somebody around to look at it?
    --Robert Dicke, Princeton physicist

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