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Woodslim Posted 12 years ago
Vocabulary

Still reading Virginia Woolf....

"There is nothing ready made for him. He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the people of Babel did in the beginning), so to crush them together that a brand new word in the end drops out. Probably it will be something laughable. For who of English birth can take liberties with the language? To us it is a sacred thing and therefore doomed to die, unless the Americans, whose genius is so much happier in the making of new words than in the disposition of the old, will come to our help and set the springs aflow."

Is it right that the underlined "for" is a conjunction which means "because"?
  

Top answer

woodslim Is it right that the underlined "for" is a conjunction which means "because"? FOR: Since; because; introducing a reason of something before advanced, a cause, motive, explanation, justification, or the like, of an action related or a statement made. It is logically nearly equivalent to since, or because, but connects less closely, and is sometimes used as a very general introduction to something suggested by what has gone before .

— Mister Micawber

  • woodslim Is it right that the underlined "for" is a conjunction which means "because"?
  • FOR: Since; because; introducing a reason of something before advanced, a cause, motive, explanation, justification, or the like, of an action related or a statement made.
  • It is logically nearly equivalent to since, or because, but connects less closely, and is sometimes used as a very general introduction to something suggested by what has gone before .
  • (Good explanation from the 1913 Webster's Dictionary)
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4 Answers
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woodslimIs it right that the underlined "for" is a conjunction which means "because"?
FOR: Since; because; introducing a reason of something before advanced, a cause, motive, explanation, justification, or the like, of an action related or a statement made. It is logically nearly equivalent to since, or because, but connects less closely, and is sometimes u
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Then, is it ok if I read it like,

"Probably it will be something laughable since English people can't take liberties with the language"

?
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Yes, that is a reasonable interpretation.
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